


Saccharine

by thoughtsofjoy_dreamsoflove



Category: The Sound of Music - Rodgers/Hammerstein/Lindsay & Crouse
Genre: Angst, F/M, Musicals, Rolfe is fucked up and stupid, Romance, Theatre, but sad, is there any type of ship I enjoy more than tragic young love???, nah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-02-11 11:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12934293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsofjoy_dreamsoflove/pseuds/thoughtsofjoy_dreamsoflove
Summary: At first, the romance between Rolfe and Liesl seems innocent, airy, saccharine. But in 1938, in a world where the Nazis loom over Austria, nothing is ever as perfect as it appears.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! I'm new to AO3 and transferring over some old stuff from fanfiction.net. This was originally published from December 2013 to July 2014. My writing has evolved since then, but I still have a soft spot for this fic. Anyway, I'll probably upload the chapters on a weekly basis or so. 
> 
> Enjoy, and please leave a comment telling me your thoughts!! :)

_"His eyes swear forever, flatter with vows of only me. But are they empty promises?...His eyes whisper secrets. But are they truths or fairy tales? I wonder if even he knows."_ \- Ellen Hopkins, _Tricks_

* * *

Liesl slipped out of the side door, making sure her black shoes didn't click too loudly on the marble floor. She'd had enough practice with this. Every time her heart was ticking rapidly with nerves, but she was always careful.

 _Today has been such an odd day,_ She thought as she peeked behind her shoulder – just to make sure she hadn't been noticed. _An odd day that brought along an odd governess._ Liesl had yet to be fond of a single governess – they were either dreadfully stupid, dreadfully old and stern, or dreadfully jumpy and stressed. And the fact that they did everything her father was supposed to do – educate, care for, _love_ his own children – made her hate them all the more… But this new one, Fraulein Maria, didn't seem to fit any of those boxes. She wasn't familiar, and so Liesl was worried. It might take longer to get rid of this one…

 _Think of happy things, Liesl._ She shook her head, brown curls jostling against her shoulders. _You don't want him to see you with a frown on your face, do you?_

The thought of him – him waiting for her patiently by the white gazebo – instantly brought a smile to her face. Her skin seemed to tingle with warmth, and she set off across the lawn.

These moments, though usually far between, were what she looked forward to. In a household where strict marching was common but not laughter, where Father's icy indifference wasn't even surprising anymore, nights like this were wonderful. It wasn't often Liesl had someone's full attention, and when it was _Rolfe's_ full attention...well, it was very nice indeed. At this age she sometimes felt so _confused;_ filled with turbulent and uncertain feelings. She _knew_ she wasn't a child anymore, and the unexplored world of womanhood seemed so sophisticated and wonderful, but frustratingly out of reach. It was hard, not having a mother to talk to about all the things she felt she ought to understand. But it was fine – she could find things out all on her own. _I already am, with Rolfe._ _I'm learning how to be in love._

She reached the clearing in the middle of the grove of trees where the gazebo sat, like a delicate ornamental bird. Everything was tinted with a silver cast, the stars danced indolently in their orbits, and there, behind a tree, she could see Rolfe waiting.

"Rolfe!" His name, strong and somehow boyish at the same time, burst from her lips.

He looked up, his blue eyes shining. The moonlight turned his blond hair and his skin nearly pure white, and he looked godly and radiant and _perfect._ He stepped forward and Liesl ran to him and leaped into his arms. He embraced her back, his hold warm and safe.

Rolfe pushed her away slightly. "No, Liesl, we mustn't." Though his words were harsh, his voice was soft and half-hearted. Liesl knew he didn't really mean it. She had figured out by now how to tell when he was really and truly serious about something.

"Why not, silly?" she asked, trying to sound as angelic for him as possible.

His already not very stern expression wavered, and he shifted awkwardly. Liesl loved the way he looked when he was shy. She loved how he looked just about any time.

"I don't know," he said. "It's just that –"

"Isn't that why you're here?" She raised an eyebrow, grinning slightly. She could tell he was a bit scared, but then, she was too. "Waiting for me?"

"Yes, of course," Rolfe answered quickly. The tips of his ears turned red with embarrassment. "I missed you, Liesl."

She smiled, not taking her eyes off of his face. Skin pale as cream, with wheat-blond hair and blue eyes like blown glass, dense but clear. He was so handsome sometimes she feared she might burst. "You have?" she asked coyly. "How much?"

He smiled. "So much, I almost thought of sending you a telegram, just so I could deliver it here."

Liesl's heart fluttered at his words. It sounded so romantic, like something a boy in a novel would say. "What a lovely thought!" she gasped, imagining a neat little telegram, sealed with a blue ribbon and with edelweiss attached. _Dearest Liesl…_ "Why don't you?"

"But I'm here!"

She widened her eyes and looked up at his taller form, doing her best to look as pleading as she could. "Please, Rolfe. Send me a telegram. I'll start it for you: Dear Liesl."

"Dear Liesl," he repeated. She loved the way her name sounded coming from him, like a delicate, sugary thing on his tongue. "I'd like to be able to tell you how I feel about you, STOP." He said as he paced, looking nervous. Liesl watched in anticipation.

"Unfortunately, this wire is already too expensive. Sincerely, Rolfe." He finished teasingly.

Liesl felt disappointment prick at her. What if he didn't like _(love)_ her as much as she liked _(loved)_ him? But she wasn't about to give up yet. Not in a secluded clearing with a perfect boy, with whom it seemed possible to grab the stars. "Sincerely?" she pouted.

"Cordially," Rolfe's lips twitched in amusement.

"Cordially?" Liesl urged.

"Affectionately," he amended, seemingly too jittery to say what she wanted.

Affectionately, however, was good enough for Liesl, and she impulsively hugged him, burying her face in his chest. Her heart swelled in her throat as she suddenly felt his warm breath by her ear.

"Will there be any reply?" he whispered, his voice holding a devilish promise.

The unfamiliarity of his closeness was disconcerting, but alluring, too. She pulled back and looked into his blue orbs, her head feeling fuzzy. "Dear Rolfe, STOP." She said softly. "Don't stop! Your Liesl."

Looking up at him, she suddenly wished that they could see each other any time they wished. Although there was something terribly poetic and romantic about having to hide, she wanted more. She wanted to lead him around the city and fall in love amongst stone churches and arching fountains, and not give a single thought to what her overbearing father might say.

"I wish we didn't have to wait until someone sends Father a telegram," Liesl sighed. "How do I know when I'll see you again?"

The skin between Rolfe's eyebrows crinkled, the way it always did when he was thinking. "Well…I could come here by mistake. With a telegram for Colonel Schneider! He's here from Berlin – " His lips clamped shut and a sallow shade suddenly spread across his face. "No one's supposed to know he's here!" His voice dropped to a hiss. "Don't tell your father, now."

Normally Liesl wouldn't have worried too much, but his eyes were darker now, the blue of them like a bruise. "Why not?" she asked hesitantly.

Rolfe swallowed. "Your father's so…Austrian."

She laughed, though there was a hollow ring to it. She knew that patriotism wasn't so rewarded anymore in Austria, but not wanting to talk about such things, she merely said "We're all Austrians!"

"But some people think we ought to be German, and they're very mad at those who don't think so." He replied matter-of-factly. "They're planning to –" Here he stopped, biting his lip. The words hung fragmentary and dark in the air between them, but all he said was "Let's just hope your father doesn't get in trouble."

Liesl felt as if a thread of frost had snaked down her spine. For a while now the Germans had loomed, threatening and maniacal in the distance like a storm. She didn't understand all the details of the situation, cooped up in the villa most of the day, but she'd heard the staff whispering about "Anschluss". Did Rolfe know something? _Surely he isn't… no, of course not. He carries telegrams for a living, it's reasonable that he should hear of things. It doesn't mean he works with them._ Liesl thought of her father, distant and cold in his fancy suits and trips to the Baroness, and her mouth set in a firm line. No, she wouldn't tell her father, just as Rolfe had asked. Father dear didn't want to hear from her, anyway.

"Don't worry about Father," she replied, bringing another smile to her face. Unpleasant things like annexations and politics didn't belong in her saccharine little world of moon and secrets and Rolfe. "He's a big naval hero. He was even decorated by the Emperor."

"I don't worry about him." He suddenly closed one warm hand over Liesl's. "But I _do_ worry about his daughter."

Every part of her body was humming. _He worries, he cares!_ "Me? Why?"

"Well," he fumbled over his words. She could feel the pulse in his wrist beat against her fingertips. "You're so –"

"What?"

He laughed, his face turning pink. "Well, you're such a baby!"

Liesl felt disappointment course through her. _A baby?_ That was the _last_ thing she wanted to hear _._ Here she was _,_ on the cusp of womanhood and childhood, and he was calling her a _baby?_ "I'm sixteen. What's such a baby about that?"

Rolfe smiled tenderly. "You wait, little girl, on an empty stage, for fate to turn the light on. Your life, little girl, is an empty page that men will want to write on." He sang.

"To write on…" she echoed him, still a bit indignant from his "baby" comment. _He may be sort of right. My life hasn't quite begun yet, but that's because I haven't yet had the chance, and I_ am _prepared!_

"You are sixteen, going on seventeen. Baby, it's time to think. Better beware, be canny and careful. Baby, you're on the brink." Rolfe stood up smartly and patted her shoulder. "You are sixteen going on seventeen, fellows will fall in line. Eager young lads and roués and cads, will offer you food and wine."

Liesl imagined being courted by all these men and smiled. He was trying to tease her, maybe scare her a little bit, but it didn't sound scary at all – it sounded sophisticated; idyllic.

He circled around behind her, grinning mischievously. "Totally unprepared are you to face a world of men."

Liesl looked behind her shoulder and her heart skipped at his sudden nearness. She instinctively leaned forward. There was only Rolfe and the moonlight spilling over the angles of his face, and the steady sound of his breath…

He swallowed and backed away, and the rest of the world rushed back into Liesl's focus. _Nervous, are we?_ She thought, her heart still thudding. _I'll get my kiss before the end of the night, Rolfe, just wait and see._

"Timid and shy and scared are you of things beyond your ken." He smiled teasingly and wagged a finger at her. "You need someone older and wiser telling you what to do. I am seventeen going on eighteen…I'll take care of you!" He put a hand to his chest in sincerity.

Liesl laughed and hugged him. She loved that he wanted to protect her, loved the way he made her feel like diaphanous-winged moths fluttered between her lungs; loved the feeling of his arms fitting perfectly around her. _Oh, I love you. I want you beside me forever and ever._ He spun her around, her gauzy skirt arcing in the air, then he stopped and held a warning finger in front of her face. He was just playing, she knew this. They always tended to run in circles around each other, so she played along. She crossed her arms, pouted. She grinned at the apologetic expression on his face, then tossed her head and started walking in the other direction.

The sky suddenly lit up, and Liesl felt something land on her head. Thunder grumbled and rain hit the bare skin of her arms in sharp splatters. Rolfe grabbed her hand and they ran into the gazebo as the rain began to fall harder and harder. He closed the doors, and she took a shuddering breath. They were alone. Together. Late at night, and they couldn't very well leave with the storm outside. Everything looked beautiful as the moonbeams hit the rivulets of water streaming down the glass walls that protected them. She smelled the clean, fresh, somehow melancholy scent of rain and every nerve in her body tingled.

Rolfe stood in front of the door, and time seemed frozen as Liesl looked at him. His strong chest rose and fell, every sloping angle of his form outlined with light from outside. His firm hands still clutched the door handles, and she saw her own tentative excitement mirrored by his features. The gazebo had become the entire world, and it was just her and Rolfe and the steady, absent pattering of rain.

Liesl was sixteen. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice high above the ground, gravity tugging on her, the stone beneath her feet steadily crumbling, and yet she was ready to fall. She wanted to know the ways of the world – and she had the feeling her knowledge was about to be expanded.

"I am sixteen going on seventeen. I know that I'm naive. Fellows I meet may tell me I'm sweet, and willingly I believe." She sang, and he grinned endearingly at her.

"I am sixteen, going on seventeen, innocent as a rose. Bachelor dandies, drinkers of brandies. What do I know of those?" She smiled at him, hoping to let him know she wasn't quite as naïve as she appeared.

Liesl walked towards him, hands behind her back. "Totally unprepared am I, to face a world of men. Timid and shy and scared am I, of things beyond my ken." She leaned towards him and began climbing her fingers up his shoulder.

Rolfe's face flushed and he turned the other way, but Liesl dashed in front of him and jumped onto the bench. She noted the impressed look on his face and continued to sing.

"I need someone older and wiser telling me what to do." Here she grew a bit shy. "You are seventeen going on eighteen. I'll depend on you."

Rolfe's expression softened with happiness. Liesl leaned forward, confident that this was the moment. Blood hummed to the surface of her skin. She wanted so much to understand the intricacies of love and relationships, and this, this kiss, would be one step closer...

She leaned too far forward and began to fall, the moment broken. But he caught her in his arms, and without even thinking about it, they began to dance. He held her hand as they ran in circles around the gazebo, they twirled and she grew dizzy. The rain dribbled against the glass, seeming to echo their heartbeats. They danced together and then apart, and finally they were sitting at opposite sides of the gazebo, their breathing heavy.

She stared at him.

He stared back.

There they sat, both of them so _young_ , so clumsily inexperienced, and for the moment locked together in this world where Liesl didn't have to be constrained in a drab uniform and could instead be a lovely thing of light and air. Never mind their two realities poised on the periphery of this little world, waiting to remind them about the less-than-fairytale things that surrounded them. The only thing that mattered right now was the pull between them; so intimate and thrilling and grown-up, but foreign and disquieting, too.

Liesl's nerves overtook her then; she felt like each one was yarn unraveling into anxious threads. They stood up, and tentatively danced. Without warning he was right in front of her, their lips close enough that one move would turn into a kiss. She wanted to kiss him so badly, but she was frightened, too. They moved away again, but inevitably found themselves facing each other.

His pulse – or maybe it was her own – was loud in her ears, drowning out even the rain. The world blurred, and suddenly his mouth was over hers, his warm hands on either side of her face. She tasted peppermint on his lips, and her entire mind seemed filled with light, and the world seemed like a dazzling, unrestricted place of wonder and love. And all because of him, because the world was him and his mouth and his warmth -

Rolfe pulled back. They stared into each other's eyes – blue meeting blue – and then his face turned scarlet and he ran, out of the gazebo and into the pounding rain. Liesl was impossibly, deliriously happy, and she squealed with joy.

_He loves me!_


	2. Chapter 2

_"...the fascination of those eyes, which had bewitched so many seemingly sober men..." -_ Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper on the eyes of Adolf Hitler.

* * *

It was one o'clock in the morning, and Rolfe lay in the pitch dark on his bed, feeling sick to his stomach.

He wasn't entirely sure why. He wasn't entirely sure of much of anything. His eyes felt raw. The rain continued to pound against the windows and roof. When he'd been in the gazebo mere hours earlier, it had been a dreamlike, whimsical sound, but now it sounded like people slamming their fists on the door; demanding, hunting him down. He imagined people with swastikas on their arms and flashlights in their hands bursting in and shining them into his eyes.

_**Are you in love with Liesl von Trapp?** _

_I don't know, I don't know, maybe, probably, almost definitely_

He rubbed at his eyes and rolled over. What was _wrong_ with him? _People aren't supposed to feel this confused after kissing a girl. And that's all I did. I didn't commit any crime._

About half of him was very happy. Half of him was glowing, bursting, because he'd just kissed a girl dressed in pink, a girl who was beautiful no matter where she was. He suspected that she could be in the chasms of Hell and still look as lovely as she did in that gazebo, with tiny diamonds of raindrops trembling on her hair and the arc of her neck. Kissing her felt as essential as breathing.

But the other half of him was afraid that he'd made a very big mistake, and these two emotions – happy and afraid – clashed against each other so violently it turned into a frantic mess of paranoia.

She was Captain von Trapp's daughter, after all. Captain von Trapp didn't like the Führer, so Rolfe didn't like Captain von Trapp. His superiors had told him not to, and that was all there was to it. Of course, there had been a time when Rolfe didn't like the Führer either, but that was a time that was strangely difficult to recall. Rolfe furrowed his eyebrows; tried to remember. He had only been enlightened for…how many months was it now?

How very odd, that he couldn't think of a time when he _hadn't_ lived for or wanted to die for Adolf Hitler. It was as if he'd carried Germany's truth under his skin for his entire life and it had suddenly awoken.

When he was 15 he had met a boy from Berlin named Gerhard, who was vacationing for several months in Austria. Gerhard was loud, reckless, and fun; the kind of person that gave you a bold, drunken feeling whenever they were around. They'd kept in touch ever since, and some months ago Gerhard had sent him a letter that was going to irreversibly alter Rolfe's life, though he hadn't known it at the time.

_Dear Rolfe,_

_You need to come visit me in Berlin next week. I'm sure you could afford to miss school for a few days, and it's been so long since we've seen each other in person. My parents don't mind. Adolf Hitler is going to give a speech and I'd really like for you to come see it. I know a lot of you Austrians are probably a bit skeptical of him, but he's brilliant! He's an utter genius and you have to come. I would like to see you again, and for you to see our Führer!_

\- _Your Friend, Gerhard_

Rolfe had never much cared for politics. His mind was too busy with the adolescent troubles of schoolwork, friends, and future, so he decided to go to Berlin not for Hitler, but for Gerhard. Inwardly, he'd groaned at the thought of listening to Germany's leader rant about a country that wasn't his and that he therefore didn't care about. But if Gerhard really wanted him to, he'd manage.

He didn't remember much about his first few days in Berlin, either – he remembered looking down any street and seeing brash red flags with black swastikas in the center, waving merrily from the shops. But the only real parts he remembered of his week with Gerhard in Berlin were the Speech and the aftermath. The Speech that seemed as if it had dragged him out of freezing water he hadn't known he was drowning in, the Speech that made him wish he was German.

It had been crowded, with maybe hundreds of people there. The room was blanketed in rich red flags that dwarfed even the massive audience, the swastikas in their centers strangely hard to look away from. A monumental aureate eagle towered above the podium, dominating the room. There was a peculiarly febrile, orphic hum in the atmosphere. Rolfe had been sitting awkwardly with Gerhard and his three friends, whose names he hadn't bothered to remember. They'd all greeted him not with "Hello" but with "Heil Hitler!" and Rolfe didn't really know what to think of it. They hadn't spoken a single word to him since. He was surrounded on all sides by people and by Gerhard, his friend, but he felt alone, out of place. Among them, but not one of them. They'd been waiting for nearly an hour, he was tired of being ignored by Gerhard's sophisticated Berlin friends, and at that point, he'd just wanted to return to Gerhard's apartment and sleep.

"Is this ever going to _start_?" he'd hissed to Gerhard.

"Shut up, would you?" Gerhard had replied. "It'll start soon,"

Rolfe had fidgeted. He'd been annoyed, but also intrigued. _There must be_ something _worthwhile about this if so many are willing to wait an hour just to see him talk._

There was.

Only a few minutes after Gerhard had reprimanded him, Germany's Führer was announced with a burst of thunderous, patriotic music. Something in the drums stirred Rolfe's blood, and despite himself, he'd felt excitement starting to flare. Adolf Hitler walked out onto the stage, and the arena suddenly exploded with applause. Rolfe jumped, startled. Beside him Gerhard was screaming "Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!" Rolfe had been puzzled. _But Hitler hasn't even said anything yet,_ he'd thought, clapping to be polite, but staring down the Führer with a critical eye. _He doesn't look like anything remarkable._ Adolf Hitler had appeared like nothing more than any ordinary man, with brown hair, a small mustache, and an eye color Rolfe couldn't distinguish.

It was the last time Rolfe would ever be able to look at Adolf Hitler and think "ordinary".

The Führer had stood still for about a minute, seeming to judge the audience, to figure out exactly who they were and what they needed to hear. The people had quieted down, and then he began to speak.

Rolfe found that later he couldn't remember many of the exact words Hitler had said, only the emotions that had stirred up in him; the images the Führer's words had painted in the air. He wouldn't be able to find any good way to describe it, but there was _something_ about Germany's leader that was so compelling, so mesmeric he simply couldn't fathom how Hitler could be wrong about anything. Rolfe was enchanted. Suddenly he loved Germany more than his own country. Suddenly he saw so clearly the Jews and the Bolsheviks slinking about in the dark, plotting to suppress Germany and the great Aryan race. _How dare they!_ Rolfe had never been anti-Semitic before, but now his eyes were open, and he saw how they truly were - immoral, cunning, untethered wanderers. It was suddenly so _obvious_ that ethnic Germans were the superior race, and he was amazed that he'd never thought about it before. He saw the world as it would one day be, a world full of promise where everything was bright and clean and moral, and the Aryans had all the space they needed. Thoughts he'd never even thought before suddenly became the undeniable truth – the weaker countries must bow to Germany, the world belonged to the strong, the Jews had to go, Adolf Hitler had been given to the people by God.

Rolfe suddenly felt ashamed of being Austrian. He wished he was German more than just about anything in that moment. The entire audience was mesmerized, caught under a spell by the sheer force of Hitler's emotion and the flaming of his china blue eyes. He was a brilliant, messianic figure, contrasting sharply against the crimson of his flags. Every syllable he spoke seemed to glow. Rolfe felt pulled into a dizzying, all-consuming fever dream. And then the speech was over, and the people rose from their seats as one and applauded, although it was less like applause and more like hysteria. Rolfe had clutched Gerhard's arm and he realized suddenly that he was crying. All around him were faces staring up at the Führer with an almost inhuman adoration, and everybody was screaming at the top of their lungs, and without even making the conscience decision to, Rolfe had begun yelling "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" He melted into this single, fervent entity of white German faces and countless right arms stretching, stretching, stretching out to their Führer in a " _Heil!"_ For minutes on end the very air was red, red as a revolutionary dawn - it was burning with the sound of screaming and "Heil Hitler!" soaring through the room like a hymn. Rolfe's throat grew hoarse, but what did that matter?

After they'd left, Rolfe had felt curiously drained, breathless. He heard "Sieg Heil!" with every beat of his heart. Gerhard wanted to go get drinks, and although Rolfe was normally wary of alcohol, he heartily agreed. He felt bold and daring. He wanted to be brave, just like a German soldier ought to be. He hadn't realized it yet, but his heart, mind, and soul were in the palm of Adolf Hitler's hand.

The night was vivid. All of a sudden Gerhard's friends, whose names he didn't even know, seemed like the best people he'd ever met. They swaggered through the streets on their way to the bar, already drunk on patriotism. They snickered at the yellow stars painted on some unfortunate shops. They all grinned so wide it looked almost gruesome, and at random they might simultaneously shout "Heil Hitler!" and admire how it reverberated throughout the dark Berlin. They practiced marching. They laughed for no reason whatsoever, and it seemed that the whole world with all its riches was laid out just for them.

Rolfe drained several beers in a row, until his head was filled with stars and the streetlights blurred into each other. Gerhard smirked at him.

"I _told_ you. Didn't I tell you it'd be brilliant?"

Rolfe smiled back and raised his bottle.

"Heil Hitler!"

When he'd returned to Austria, his enthusiasm hadn't died down. At school he excitedly told everything to his friends. He showed them how the Nazis marched and how the Nazis saluted.

The Führer is the soul of Germany.

The Führer says Aryans are the master race.

The Führer says Aryans ought to have more living space.

The Führer says Jews are tainted and unclean.

The Führer says those Jews and Communists are trying to rule the world.

The Führer says -

His friends had cast sideways glances at each other, the edges of their mouths tilting down slightly. "You sure do talk about the Führer a lot nowadays, Rolfe."

Rolfe forgave his friends for not understanding. They'd know the truth in the end, and that was what counted.

For months on end the Nazi Party was all he could think about, but then he met a girl who was sixteen going on seventeen and it wasn't quite the same anymore.

There were two sides to his heart. One was all blood and honor, marching and heiling, red and black and Aryans and superiority and power. The other was moonlight and gazebos, telegrams and laughter, the scent of rain on the air and a girl.

A girl with satin-lace skin and dark hair, and blue eyes that stared into his so unflinchingly. She was so pretty sometimes it almost palpably hurt. She stood, teetering, on the brink childhood innocence and adulthood, grasping for her future, and much as he acted like he was all grown-up, he knew he was in that teetering-place right there with her. Rolfe had no idea how a girl so small could create such big feelings inside him, feelings that made him want to run away and hold her forever at the same time.

He loved the way her eyes held the starlight as if it were frozen in them, and how when she danced she looked weightless, and the way her brown eyelashes rested against a cheek smooth as a pearl when her eyes were closed.

She'd just looked so lovely in that light, gossamer dress, looking at him like he was the world, and he'd pressed her pink lips to his and forgot everything for just one moment, even the Nazis

and perhaps that's what frightened him the most.

Rolfe twisted uncomfortably in his sheets again. He was being ridiculous. She was just a girl. She may have been Captain von Trapp's daughter, but surely she didn't share her father's views? And if she did, he could always teach her the right thing, couldn't he? Why did he feel so afraid? (A small part of him whispered that if he was involved in something that made him fear terrible punishment after merely kissing a girl, perhaps he should get away from it as soon as possible. He pushed the thought away)

_My superiors wouldn't punish me for liking Liesl von Trapp. She's not the same person as her father._ He told himself. _Why can't I have both Liesl and my position with the Nazis? Liesl deserves the world we're trying to create._ The thought brought a smile to Rolfe's face. _Yes, that's right. Liesl deserves this. I'm helping to get it for her, and when we do, she and I can be happy – together._

Soothed, he closed his eyes to sleep. _Everything will be fine. I'll be fine and Liesl will be fine._

He honestly believed they would be.


	3. Chapter 3

_"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul."_ – Judy Garland

* * *

The impossible had occurred – Liesl's life now seemed like it couldn't possibly get any better.

No more lifeless uniforms. No more harsh, metallic whistles. No more ridiculously straight lines and militaristic perfection. Everything was sunny, happy, and hopeful. _And all because of Fraulein Maria._ Liesl mused. None of them could've expected how Maria would change the entire household, but they weren't complaining. Not at all.

She'd at first thought of Maria as silly and inexperienced; someone Father would fire in record time. Then she'd admired the governess with a grudging respect as Fraulein tolerated their ugly tricks and antics, and then she'd considered her a friend, and then as the only mother figure she'd had for five years.

 _And now…Maria is going to be my mother for real._ The thought was dizzying.

Liesl remembered helplessly watching her father become a bleak and unapproachable figure. His body seemed to become more angular and rigid; built of clear-cut lines and hard edges. The songs; the stern yet gentle manner he'd always carried; the laughter had all gone down in that casket with Agathe, perhaps tucked away in her unstirring heart. And then he began to run his family as if they were a crew upon one of his warships, and Liesl had thought he was never going to come back. She remembered a single moment in that first year after her mother had passed away, when she'd thought – _Mother is dead. And maybe Father is, too._

She'd been 11 years old.

But now, there was Maria, and Liesl knew everything would be alright. The governess had misted the gray household with color, and taught the children that it was fine to just have fun and be silly and make mistakes. Liesl had come to love Maria's wit, creativity, flightiness, and free-spirited nature. Father had too. And that, really, was the best thing of all.

Liesl couldn't keep the wide smile off her face as she looked around the church chapel. The pews were crowded with Father's friends. Everything was golden and glittering as the afternoon sun shed its light through stained glass. The von Trapps had gone to church less and less since Agathe's death, and Liesl had all but stopped believing in God. But now she felt as if a gentle presence was there, laying a warm hand on her shoulder and smiling.

 _Thank you, God._ She thought. _I mean it._

After all, if this wedding wasn't a miracle, she didn't know what was.

Gretl and Marta stood beside her, their youthful faces glowing with excitement. All 3 of them wore snowy white dresses. Liesl's little sisters fidgeted as they awaited Maria's entrance, and she hushed them gently. Marta and Gretl had only the barest memories of Mother; when she died Marta had been 2 and Gretl had only been a baby. _It's going to be so wonderful for them to have someone to braid their hair and read them storybooks._ She thought. _It'll make up for all those years when I had to play mother and when we only had each other. Now we all have a_ real _mother, and Father has someone he loves again…_ Liesl felt suddenly as if she might cry, but she only bit her lip and held back the tears. _Best not to cry and confuse the little ones. They won't understand that the tears are happy._

A group of nuns appeared like a flock of ravens and lead Maria, a single dove among them, to the iron gates entering the chapel. She entered, looking prettier than she ever had before. A simple pearly dress floated to the floor with a feminine, pure grace, and a veil drifted down as well, light as a whisper. Maria gave Liesl an anxious but warm smile. Liesl wondered if she'd look so beautiful at her own wedding. She wondered if she _would_ get married.

She handed Maria a cluster of ivory flowers. The blond woman's fingers shook ever so slightly as she grasped them, but it seemed not a tremble of fear but of anticipation. Maria seemed lit from within; the golden cheerful glow of sunlight was shining from her eyes. _Did I look like that when Rolfe kissed me?_ Liesl thought. She reminded herself sharply to focus on her role in the ceremony and gave her little sisters a gentle push. They started off slowly down the aisle. Liesl and Maria exchanged glances, and Liesl felt tears pushing at the back of her eyes again. Their family was whole.

As Liesl took measured steps down the length of the cathedral, her mind flitted to Rolfe again. It must've been several months since that wonderful night of her first kiss, and although she had met up with him a handful of times after that, lately she hadn't seen him at all. She figured Father simply didn't have any telegrams arriving for him lately. Rolfe couldn't be tired of her; _he_ had kissed _her_ after all. Everything else was falling into place perfectly, so Liesl couldn't bring herself to worry about it much. _The next time I see him,_ she thought, _I'll have so many things to tell him about!_

She ascended the stone steps to the altar, Maria behind her. She watched as Father took his bride's hand. A smile twitched at his lips, and Liesl marveled at the display of genuine happiness on his face.

They looked at each other as if they both knew exactly who the other was; knew what they loved and what they hated, what they feared, what they were proud of, what they were insecure about, what they dreamed. The Captain and the governess knew each other as well as two people could, and cherished every part of the other, and Liesl was breathless with the sheer beauty of that. _What an amazing thing it is, for two people to love and understand each other so completely._ To be so close to someone, to be united under the eyes of God and loved ones…what would that be like?

Liesl wanted to know about those things. To know how it felt for her soul to be linked with another. Sometimes it seemed like she'd never understand this kind of forever-love. _Is that what Rolfe and I have? He makes me feel so wonderful and_ alive _, but would I marry him if he asked? How do I know if I'm ready?_ She missed Rolfe, wanting to feel his peppermint lips kiss her again and explore what her feelings for him meant. For a moment she was disheartened, but then she looked at Father and Maria again and smiled. _I have a new mother to talk about everything with now._

Church bells chimed, ringing in the bright, glittering future of the von Trapp family. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

_(But of course,_

_everything did)_


	4. Chapter 4

_"Yes, as a tool I may prove good for something. But as a human being I am a wreck."_ \- Leo Tolstoy, _Anna Karenina_

* * *

Rolfe liked being a Nazi.

He liked the bold image of the Nazi flag: twisting black lines upon a blinding white circle upon a mercurial red background. That flag could burn itself on the eyes of all who saw it.

He liked the straight-armed salute and the crisp goose-stepping. He liked the Nazi Party anthem, _Horst-Wessel-Lied,_ and he often found himself humming it.

He liked the atmosphere of blazing passion and fervor. Nothing was more important than the Fatherland and the Führer. _Sieg Hiel_!

He liked Adolf Hitler most of all. Hitler was Germany's savior. He'd never _really_ met Hitler, of course, but he felt like he had. The Führer was good and kind and selfless, and his leadership skills were incredible. He was a genius with God's blessing, no doubt. Who else could've saved Germany's economy; warned them about Jewry and Communism? If Rolfe could pick the way he'd die, he would want it to be in service of the Führer, somehow.

The Nazis were precise and methodical, and the powerful bellicose perfection was intoxicating. They were sharp, clean, well-oiled instruments, honed to burn away the weak parts of the old world. Rolfe had the feeling he'd never feel so perfect and noble again.

The Nazis did carry a dark undertone, though, a thin layer of danger peeking from under the brash vermilion flag. Rolfe didn't really notice it at first, enthralled with them as he was. Later on he began to sense it, a taut seethe of death lurking behind that might lash out like a serpent and then recede back underneath a veil of wild nationalism.

But for the first few months, anyway, he was sharing the top of the world with them.

He joined the Hitler Youth. The local branch of the Nazi Party was headed by _Gaulieter_ Herr Zeller. Herr Zeller was a stern, harsh man with a thin black mustache and an arrogant manner about him. Rolfe tried to like him, but he couldn't quite do it. Herr Zeller was one of those people that could make you feel inferior and stupid simply by being in the same room.

He wondered if he was a bad Nazi for not being fond of Herr Zeller. All _Gauleiters_ were personally appointed by Adolf Hitler, and he certainly liked Adolf Hitler. Eventually he decided that he probably wasn't doing anything wrong as long as he obeyed and was loyal to the _Gaulieter_. He figured that's what his Führer would tell him.

One day Rolfe had to deliver a telegram to Herr Zeller. He lived in a large, dark wooden house just outside Salzburg. His home was big enough to be considered a mansion, but still smaller than the von Trapp family's. Rolfe, who hadn't met Liesl at the time, always felt bitter at the idea – he may not like Herr Zeller that much, but as a Nazi official, he deserved a better home than Captain von Trapp.

The sun was just beginning to fade out, and streaks of orange light slipped through the dark branches of the trees in Herr Zeller's yard. It wasn't any different than a normal telegram delivery: he knocked on the door, greeted the _Gauleiter_ with a salute, handed him the telegram and was just starting to leave.

But then Herr Zeller said, "Rolfe."

_What do you want?_ He thought, glancing, irritated, at the sinking sun. His mother wouldn't like it if he was late for dinner.

Herr Zeller set an analytical gaze on Rolfe, and he shifted nervously. The older man's brown eyes were hard as river stones, and he tapped the telegram rhythmically against his palm.

"I just wanted to make sure, my boy," The _Gauleiter_ said. "That you know you're nothing without us."

Rolfe stared at him, confused. The comment seemed so sudden and out of place. He wet his lips nervously. "What do you mean, sir?" He prayed it wasn't some painfully obvious answer.

Herr Zeller shrugged, and smiled somewhat pleasantly. Rolfe had never seen him look remotely pleasant before.

"I mean that before you were a Nazi, you weren't much at all. Just an ordinary Austrian boy, a million other Austrian boys just like you, all of your lives separate but in perfect unison." He waved his right hand disdainfully. "Grow up, go to school, worry about all the pretty young girls that send a smile your way, get an ordinary job, perhaps marry, produce a few children, watch your bones decay into the dust of old age, and finally die."

Herr Zeller continued to grin at him. Rolfe spotted a portrait of Adolf Hitler through the pane of a window, and Adolf Hitler was smiling too, seemingly in agreement with his _Gauleiter._

"Die, without anything to mark your existence but a single gravestone, surrounded by so many other gravestones exactly like it." Herr Zeller said. "A paper existence, don't you think?"

_A paper existence._ Rolfe stood still, not having any idea what he was supposed to say. The conversation was so unexpected, but it shook him. He'd never had any problem with his life before Hitler, not while he was living it. He'd thought the life Herr Zeller described didn't seem so bad – it was _normal_ – but the way he spoke of it now made it seem so…vapid. Trivial. Meaningless. Rolfe's only goal had been to stay comfortably in the middle-class and live out the rest of his life. But maybe his life – and he himself – really _was_ insipid and worthless. Thin as paper, superficial as a mirage.

His brows knit together. Did it really mean little to nothing? Seventeen years of exploring the streets of Salzburg and eating _topfenstrudel_ with his parents and keeping up grades in school? Painting-Hitler was staring at him intensely through the glass. Rolfe had never been terribly insecure, at least not any more insecure than the average teenage boy was. _But maybe I should've,_ he thought, panic rising in his throat. _Maybe I am just a stupid, unexceptional human being._

He was mostly average – average intelligence, average physical capabilities, and average family life. He had no particular talents and no particular passions, and, with a few exceptions, was not really noticed or thought about by anyone unless he was right there. He had always been a little bit shy and awkward, especially around girls, and perhaps that was all he was: a somewhat inept young Austrian boy, interchangeable with a million other young Austrian boys. No substance. No importance.

_A paper existence._

Part of him thought Herr Zeller was wrong and that he did matter, but that part was becoming more unstable. _Herr Zeller is probably smarter than I am. He's been personally appointed by the Führer, who is an utter genius._

It was all so obvious, now - just how placid, mundane, and insignificant his life was. His heart tumbled into his stomach. He looked past the _Gauleiter_ , his eyes focused on Painting-Hitler searchingly. He didn't notice the smirk on Herr Zeller's face.

"Don't feel bad, my boy," Herr Zeller said. "You're one of us. An ethnic German. Alone you're nothing, but if you fulfill your duty as a link in the chain of the superior race, you are incredibly valuable. If you are true to the spirit of Adolf Hitler, give him your unfaltering obedience, and ask yourself what he would do in any given situation, _then_ you're worthy. You must be willing to sacrifice yourself to our cause, because the cause of all of us is more important than your one, individual life. You want to live for something greater than yourself, yes?"

Rolfe blinked and refocused on the Nazi official. He let the information sink in. "Yes, sir," he said, nodding slowly.

The Nazi official grinned even wider. "Excellent. You're one of _us_ , don't forget."

A faint glimmer of hope. _I_ am _one of them._ The idea of the Nazis had never seemed more romantic to him - to belong to them would be to belong to the noble, the glorious, the heroic. He understood now - there wasn't anything to him at all. He'd much rather be built of courage, swastikas, Nazism, and the words of his Führer. His vapid paper frame would have supports – _and in return,_ he silently swore. _I'll be loyal, always._

Entwining his identity with the National Socialists seemed like the most logical thing in the world. "Rolfe" was a rather pathetic person, now that he thought about it.

"Rolfe the Nazi" seemed much better.

* * *

There were times when Rolfe doubted the Nazis.

Not very much. Only a little. But sitting in class while the teacher was explaining some math and he was nearly dozing off, a memory flew into his head that he hadn't thought of in years.

He had had Jewish neighbors when he was about five.

He didn't remember the parents' names, but he remembered their seven-year-old son's – Hillel, or something. Hillel had been a slight, dark-haired boy with glasses that seemed far too large for his face. He'd been serious and solemn for a seven-year-old kid, but on rare days when all of Rolfe's other friends were busy he'd let Rolfe hang around him. Rolfe remembered seeing a menorah in Hillel's window around Christmastime and asking his father what it was, but his father had only shook his head.

Huh. Funny that they would suddenly come to his mind after 12 years.

_And what happened to them?_ Rolfe tapped his fingers against his desk. _I think they moved when I was about six._

He shifted uneasily. He couldn't remember his Jewish neighbors ever giving signs of cruelty. Hadn't the parents given him little candies? And Hillel had been rather patient with him, even when he was annoying.

_The Führer says that Jews are good at disguising themselves as ordinary Europeans and hiding their wickedness,_ he reminded himself.

_But was Hillel evil? And were his parents?_ Rolfe tried to shove the thought back down into the recesses of his brain. He was being a bad Nazi, thinking like this. _Don't let them deceive you, you idiot._ The Führer wouldn't be pleased.

But he felt as if he had a pebble stuck in his shoe, prodding at him relentlessly.

_Are all Jews one-hundred percent_ evil _?_

_Well, maybe not_ evil. _But still inferior to us Aryans. They're still not quite the same._

_Probably the_ majority _is evil, and it's just that there are a few who aren't as despicable. But generally, they're a wicked race. Maybe not all, but most._

He thought he was decided on the matter, but even when he arrived home he felt unsettled. The feeling of agitation persisted until he was about to go to bed, but he wasn't really sure why. Maybe it was because he was being disloyal; a poor excuse for a National Socialist. And if he was being a poor excuse for a Nazi, then wasn't he therefore being a poor excuse for a person?

_What would the Führer do?_ He asked himself _._ But for once he wasn't sure. He didn't really know whether or not Hitler believed that decent Jews could exist.

Paranoia spattered like oil on water, spread. _I'm being a bad person. I shouldn't doubt what they tell me. This is_ exactly _what the Jews want to happen._ Shame prickled at the back of his skull. _Don't be so pathetic._ And he knew how pathetic he was alone. He _couldn't_ let himself doubt the Nazi Party, and certainly not the Führer. Even if there were "decent" Jews, that didn't change the fact that he was a member of the master race and he needed to do his duty and he was _not_ going to let himself return to his former depthless self.

He _was_ going to matter. And the only way that would happen was if he lived for Adolf Hitler.

_Alone you are nothing. The fate of Germany is more important than your individual fate. Don't be dumb enough to forget._

Rolfe got on his knees at the edge of his bed and clasped his hands in prayer; pressed his lips against the tips of his fingers almost feverishly.

_God, Jesus, Adolf Hitler, please give me the strength to know your will and do the right thing. Amen._

With that, he went to sleep.

* * *

He was gifted with a pistol when he first joined the Hitler Youth. Rolfe had never shot a gun before then. Of course, he'd made finger guns and fired bullets at invisible opponents as a child, playing with his friends, but his father strictly forbade him to touch his own weaponry.

Rolfe sat in his room with a pistol in his hands, dark, sleek, and gleaming. He didn't really like it much. It was cool to the touch, but he could sense fire and destruction all coiled inside. Death encased in steel. One twitch of a finger and it could be unleashed.

He knew he was being ridiculous. It wasn't as if it would just _explode_. As long as he was careful and in control nothing would happen. But all the same…knowing that he had an instrument of carnage right there in his hands made him uneasy.

He remembered four years ago – he'd been thirteen and his mother's distant uncle, Leberecht Kueper, had died. Rolfe and his father had never met the old man, and according to Mother she hadn't even interacted with him much as a child, but she stubbornly insisted on going to Vienna for his funeral. Father rolled his eyes, muttered _"Women,"_ to Rolfe, but he gave in and they went.

Rolfe had been bored and he didn't very much care. He couldn't recall much of the funeral, but one memory had stuck with him. When his parents had herded him up to the open casket and he'd looked upon the first dead person he had ever seen.

His great-uncle's cheeks were unnaturally flat. His lips were a muted off-white color, and they peeled like ancient wallpaper. The body looked like a wax mannequin, and Rolfe had felt a chill spread across his body. Human beings were not supposed to look so still. He barely knew anything about Leberecht Kueper, but the thought – a life, filled with memory and secrets and experiences, brutally severed and dashed into oblivion. Life seemed so short, so _fleeting,_ all of a sudden, in the presence of this body that had once housed a soul and was now utterly meaningless. The idea of that - the idea of one day being nothing more than a corpse in a coffin, locked underground and forgotten, was terrifying.

The reality of death jolted him. Sweat appeared on Rolfe's pale temples, but he'd done his best not to look shaken. He'd been a thirteen-year-old boy and he was supposed to be brave.

_I'm supposed to be brave._ Rolfe stared at the pistol lying across his palms. He had the power to condemn a person to an eternity beneath the ground instead of beneath the sun. But so what, right? He was a National Socialist. He couldn't be _frightened_ of things like that. _And besides, the only people I'll be told to shoot probably deserve it._ _Like traitors, or Communists. Or Jews._ He attempted to reassure himself.

_(It was then, as a gun sat in his hands seeming to tell him that to kill was necessary and the weak must_ crumble, _that he first vaguely detected the Nazis' dangerous underbelly. But of course he didn't think anything of it)_

He gingerly sat the gun inside his drawer, and struggled to push the drawer in normally instead of slamming it shut.

_I'm so pathetic._ He thought, biting the inside of his cheek.

_God, Jesus, Adolf Hitler, please give me strength. Amen._

He went to sleep.

* * *

Liesl von Trapp was the first girl Rolfe ever thought he might be honest-to-God falling in love with.

And it wasn't easy to explain what it was about her that he liked so much. She was like spun sugar, or cumulus clouds. She was just so _nice_ and fun to be around, and she was dauntless yet innocent and always so beautiful all the time, and she always gave him this really nervous, trembling feeling inside.

Usually when he was drifting off to sleep he would think about her. He wanted to be with her a lot, and he wanted to protect her from danger. So he supposed it was love. There was something magical in those nights with her, underneath a star-salted sky, when everything seemed so simple and light and perfect. It was hard to imagine that she was the Captain's daughter. He couldn't really wrap his mind around the idea that a girl as charming as Liesl had come from a man as unreasonable and cold as Georg von Trapp.

One thing Rolfe wanted to do was tell Liesl about the Nazis and the Führer, but he could never quite do it. Maybe it was because the world of Liesl seemed so far removed from everything else, and to disturb it with politics seemed _wrong_ somehow. But the Nazis were important to him, they defined who he was more than anything else, and why should he be reluctant to unite the two most important things in his life? And he _knew_ she'd be as enchanted with it all as he was, he just knew it.

_(He would never have dreamed that the two sides of his heart were far from being united; instead they were ripping apart)_

* * *

Finally – the Anschluss had occurred.

Rolfe liked that word: _Anschluss._ It sounded at once like a conquering and a rebirth. He was glad Germany had invaded Austria without any violence. His fellow Austrians were ready to accept the National Socialists.

Herr Zeller kept repeating that "nothing in Austria has changed" but Rolfe knew it was just to appease the stubborn, foolish anti-Nazis. Of _course_ things had changed. Ethnic Germans were being united under one brilliant Reich. The people who hadn't yet learned about the Nazi Party were going to learn the right way to think. They were going to know how great and wonderful _(and deadly)_ it all was.

Rolfe dared to hope that maybe Captain von Trapp would change his mind about the Nazis. If he did, well, maybe he'd be able to see Liesl more.

Rolfe was annoyed that he hadn't taken advantage of the Captain's honeymoon to go see Liesl without sneaking around. But he'd just been incredibly busy with his telegram job and Hitler Youth meetings. And the activities they did during Hitler Youth – marching and bayonet drilling and grenade throwing and pistol shooting - always made him so tired he slept as much as he possibly could. He was rather glad that he didn't have school; he doubted he'd be able to stay awake for classes.

Even though it was exhausting, Rolfe knew it was worth it. **_"_** _The weak must be chiseled away. I want young men and women who can suffer pain. A young German must be as swift as a greyhound, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp's steel."_ That's what the Führer had said.

Unfortunately no telegrams had been sent to Captain von Trapp anyway, so he really didn't have time for Liesl lately. He was almost glad – he had never officially apologized for taking off after kissing her, and although she didn't seem to mind it had made him feel awkward during the times he'd seen her since. But it had been over a month, and her absence was beginning to grate on him.

A few days after the Nazis came to Austria, he was given two telegrams to deliver, one to Herr Zeller and one to the Captain. The Nazi's house and the Captain's house were on opposite ends on the city, which was a pain, but he'd deal with it. Rolfe went to deliver Herr Zeller's first because his mansion was closer.

The _Gauleiter_ gestured to Rolfe's bag. "You're heading over to Captain von Trapp's next, aren't you?"

He wasn't surprised that Herr Zeller knew. It was imperative that the Nazis know what was going on with just about everyone. "Yes, sir."

Herr Zeller looked into his eyes pointedly, and that feeling of inadequacy began creeping over Rolfe again. The Nazi official wanted something from him, but again he didn't understand what it was. The seconds dragged, and Rolfe felt stupider with each one.

"I believe your employer mentioned that whenever you deliver telegrams to the von Trapps, you take longer than usual." Herr Zeller said conversationally.

_I haven't even_ been _there in over a month._ Rolfe's throat felt dry, recalling the fear that had gripped him the night he'd kissed Liesl, wondering whether liking Captain von Trapp's daughter was worthy of punishment. _Surely it's not. It isn't as if Liesl is black, or Romani, or Jewish. She's Aryan just like the rest of us._

Still, he didn't want to admit the details of his time with Liesl to the _Gauleiter._ They were his to keep. If he'd been talking to the Führer himself it'd be different, but of course he wasn't.

"The Captain's house takes a while to bike to, sir." Rolfe spat out the first lie he could think of, hoping that lying to the _Gauleiter_ didn't make him a bad person. It wasn't a lie that could do any harm.

"Of course," Herr Zeller said flatly. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Rolfe, but doesn't Captain von Trapp have a daughter? Around your age, perhaps?"

Rolfe felt like a moth that'd had its wing suddenly and savagely pinned down. _He knows. How on earth does he know? Or maybe he's just guessing. Nobody's seen Liesl and I together. He just guessed and got it right._ He hesitated. He didn't have to say anything about Liesl yet. _Herr Zeller obviously already knows that the Captain has a sixteen year-old daughter, but he doesn't have to know anything about my feelings for her._

"Yes, sir. He has a daughter around my age." Rolfe said guardedly.

"I see." Herr Zeller smirked and chuckled, and Rolfe knew instantly that he had him all figured out. "And you fancy yourself in love with her, don't you?"

The color rose high in Rolfe's cheeks. Embarrassment and anger prickled across the back of his neck. He didn't like the way the Nazi official laughed at him; asked if he "fancied himself in love" as if he was an idiotic child. And now here he was blushing like mad and he couldn't exactly lie anymore. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

"I – I don't really know, sir, I just – she – " He mumbled. He couldn't seem to string together any coherent sentences, and he decided he'd rather bash his head against a wall than continue this conversation.

"I'd be careful with her, my boy. She's Georg von Trapp's, after all." The _Gauleiter_ mused.

"Yes, sir, I know, I've thought about that before." Rolfe said quickly. "But she's a good girl, I promise, not like her father at all, and I'm _sure_ that if she was told everything she'd agree with us, she is Aryan too – "

"Hush." Herr Zeller growled. "Don't separate father from daughter too much. She's probably been brought up on his Jew-sympathizing ideals… She may be a good girl, as you say. But I advise that you distance yourself from her, for a while anyway. You're only a boy, and you don't have any idea that women can ruin you if you're not careful."

Irritation sparked like static. Rolfe blushed even harder. _Only a boy?_ He was seventeen. Practically an adult.

"But, sir – "

"Don't get upset, it's completely unnecessary." The older man snorted. "It really is best to remove yourself from this little…'relationship' for a time. It's so soon after the Anschluss, you know, and who knows if we'll need you for something important. Can you afford distractions?"

Rolfe hesitated. _If they'll need me?_ He'd assumed that there wouldn't be any uprisings, since the Nazis had come without any resistance. But what if there were? They'd need him to help. Rolfe desperately wanted to do something to help the Führer. _But is Liesl really that much of a distraction? She wouldn't get in the way of me doing my duty, would she? Even if she a von Trapp –_

Herr Zeller rolled his eyes. "Such hesitation, Rolfe. I thought you wanted to live for something greater than yourself. We're going to burn our mark onto the flesh of history. Don't you want to be a part of that? You wouldn't let yourself get so ensnared in a frivolous little romance, would you?"

Rolfe couldn't seem to speak. He sensed that there was a chink in Herr Zeller's logic, but he couldn't figure out where it was. His brows creased. Uncertainty chilled him. Adolf Hitler and Liesl von Trapp had been the only things in his life that weren't totally meaningless, but looking at the _Gauleiter's_ amused face he wasn't sure even Liesl was that important.

He'd already known that his life without the Nazis was a vapid one, but he hadn't thought that all those nights by the gazebo were just as shallow.

"It's your choice, of course." Herr Zeller shrugged as if he didn't very much care. "I won't _force_ you into anything. But I do wonder…what would the Führer think of you right now?"

Instinctively, Rolfe's eyes darted to Painting-Hitler inside the window. He swore he could see disappointment heavy in the portrait's china-blue eyes. Shame and dismay engulfed him. _Would you really be let down by me, mein Führer?_ He shrank back under Hitler's penetrating wintry gaze.

He had thought that Hitler and Liesl could share his devotion, but it seemed he was wrong. He felt like he was being torn in two. God, he didn't want to give either of them up, but – the memories of him and Liesl were all ripped to shreds now by the sharpness of Herr Zeller's words; they didn't feel all that magical anymore; they were just a naïve little boy and a naïve little girl playing grown-up and _God, Jesus, Adolf Hitler,_ he just felt so _stupid._

He had to remember what he'd been told - the Nazis really and truly mattered.

As the torch-bearers of the future, they mattered more than anything.

Maybe someday soon, when people had gotten used to German occupation and he could afford…distractions, he'd be with Liesl again.

But not now.

"I...I see what you mean, sir." Rolfe said quietly. "I don't think the Führer would be very pleased, and…there are more important things than girls, anyway."

"There's a good boy." Herr Zeller grinned. "Now go on and deliver Captain von Trapp's telegram, won't you?"

He nodded. "Yes, sir. Heil Hitler!"

The _Gauleiter's_ smile widened. "Heil Hitler."

As Rolfe rode his bike back into Salzburg, he convinced himself that he'd done the right thing. He _needed_ the Nazis. He wasn't about to give them up for a "frivolous little romance". Some things just weren't worth it. And he wouldn't _ever_ want Adolf Hitler to be disappointed in him.

He did a very good job of ignoring the part of him that felt sick.


	5. Chapter 5

_"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."_ \- Anaïs Nin

* * *

The Anschluss had occurred.

The Anschluss had occurred, and Austria had rolled over like an obedient dog greeting its master.

Liesl just could not understand.

Father had always taught his children to love their country. Liesl remembered how Friederich had often begged him to tell tales about serving in the Great War. Father had almost never told any actual battle stories, but he usually told Friederich about getting awards from the Emperor. The pride was always there, in the curl in his mouth, and they'd all grown up trying to love their homeland as much as Father did. If he was willing to die for their country, _certainly_ it was a great one.

So Liesl had childishly believed that Austria wouldn't ever be annexed into Germany. If Father loved Austria so much, it must be an amazing country, and if it was an amazing country, everyone else must love it very much, too. Enough to want to hold tight to their independence.

But clearly, Father's loyalty wasn't shared by the rest of Austria.

Liesl didn't want _war_ , but she didn't know what to make of this serene indifference, either. Some people were outright cheering for the Germans, while others were going about their lives as if not a single thing had changed. She didn't see how they could, when it was clear at every turn that Austria was not Austria anymore. Austria was Germany.

Salzburg was swathed in Nazi flags. The fabric hung from the buildings like long, gaping wounds. _Wehrmacht_ soldiers dressed in brown marched through the streets in flawless unison, each of them light-haired, light-skinned, and light-eyed. While they were out in town the day after the Anschluss, Liesl had squinted her eyes as they passed and noted that they almost looked like the same person repeated infinitely. A limitless supply of pure German blood, belonging completely and utterly to Hitler.

At the very least, nothing truly bad had happened so far. Not anything Liesl was aware of, anyway. For now, the Führer seemed content merely to hold Austria in the palm of his hand. She prayed it would stay that way.

Maybe nothing in Austria had _really_ changed, after all.

As far as she could tell, the worst thing about the whole ordeal was the flags. They were enormous, and they were _everywhere._ On that first day in town, while they all stared wide-eyed at the banners that had seemed to materialize overnight, Marta had tilted her head and said:

"That thing in the center looks just like a black spider."

Quiet murmurs of agreement rose from the rest of the children, while Uncle Max's eyes darted around nervously. Only a seven-year old girl could come up with such a description for the swastika. _It really does look like_ _a spider._ Liesl thought. _A hundred ebony spiders, poised over Salzburg and contemplating where to inject their poison._

It wasn't a very nice thought, but it was a true one. Some quality woven into the fabric of the Nazi flags gave off a…predatory feeling. They towered above the city; all the individuals beneath them fading and blending into one ocean of Aryan-ness. Staring up at the Nazi emblem, the feeling that they were truly invincible wormed its way into Liesl's head. The sheer scale of those flags; the stark, fevered grandeur made her feel so _small_ and vulnerable; a mere girl trembling before raw power.

And there was something disturbingly seductive about the swastika, too, so that its image lingered on the back of her mind even after she had averted her eyes from it, like the colors that bleed across the back of your eyelids when you've stared at the sun too long. No one in Salzburg could ever escape from it, not really. The Nazis seeped between the cobblestones, settled in the lines on the citizens' faces, tattooed themselves across their hearts, stitched themselves into their lives.

God, she _hated_ them.

And to make matters worse, Rolfe was still absent. She hadn't been worrying about it too much, but now there was a sense of foreboding clinging to Salzburg the way cobwebs cling to skin, and everything seemed much worse. Even the sky looked nervous. It was so _unfair_ that the Anschluss should punch a hole in the happiness of Father and Maria's wedding, when it had seemed like everything was going to turn out perfectly. Now it was the opposite.

Every atom of Liesl missed him. She just wanted to see Rolfe come up to the villa with that telegram – _Dear Liesl –_ and lose herself in a fantasy world, just for a little while. She wanted to make fun of the new Nazi leaders with him; and she wanted him to whisper vague, pretty things in her ear; and she wanted to fold her body into his and kiss him like there was not a thing in the world to worry about.

But more than she wanted to see Rolfe again, she wanted to see Father and Maria _(Mother, now)_ again. Father would tell her that it would be hard, but it would also be alright in the end. Mother would take a deep breath and say _"It'll be fine, darling. If some pesky flags is all they're throwing at us, we can endure."_

_Hopefully,_ Liesl thought. _The Nazis will be out of Austria by the end of 1938._

* * *

A few days after the Anschluss, Liesl, her siblings, and Uncle Max were at the auditorium where the music festival was to be held. She doubted Father would be happy that Max had entered them without his permission, but Maria would be excited. Looking out at the countless rows of vacant seats made Liesl feel a little nervous, but singing at Father's party had been a lot of fun, and she could use some fun at the moment. Father wouldn't be too angry.

As they were looking over the program, a man with a thin, graying moustache and a pinched expression came briskly towards them. Another man with smooth white skin and void blue eyes marched behind him. Liesl noticed the swastika band clenched around his arm – it looked like a spider feeding poison into his bloodstream, coldly sinking its fangs through the artery.

"Herr Detweiler!" the first one said. He stopped and his arm shot up, almost like a mechanical toy. "Heil Hitler."

Liesl's eyes narrowed. _What does a Nazi want with Max?_ He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't be sure she'd ever seen him before.

Friedrich whispered, "Was that man at Father's party a while back?"

Looking closer, she nodded. _I think I_ did _see him there, looking just as cross._

"Oh. Good afternoon, Herr Zeller." Uncle Max said, not quite meeting the Nazi's eyes.

"Perhaps you've not heard." Herr Zeller responded, barely concealed pride coating his voice. "I am now the _Gauleiter_." Up went the arm again. "Heil Hitler!"

Liesl suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. The way the Germans acted, one might think Hitler pinned the stars in the sky and twirled the Earth around the sun.

Herr Zeller glared at Max, and he half-heartedly raised his right hand.

"Heil Hitler."

The _Gauleiter_ cleared his throat, satisfied with Max's compliance. "I've come from Captain von Trapp's house. The only one not in the area flying the flag of the Third Reich since the Anschluss…"

Liesl exchanged worried glances with Friedrich and Louisa. _Dear God. Not one of those swastikas in our home, too._ Home was the only place where the Nazis' dark presence _hadn't_ permeated.

"But, we have dealt with that." Herr Zeller continued nonchalantly.

"I don't – " Uncle Max muttered.

"The housekeeper told me that I would find you here. The only thing she'd tell me." The Nazi official glowered suspiciously.

"What kind of information were you looking for?"

"When will the Captain return?"

With those five words, Liesl felt a heavy, painful lump gathering in the pit of her stomach. _What does he want with my father? Oh, God, I've only just gotten him back. He can't have done anything to anger them; he hasn't even been in the country…_

Uncle Max, luckily, appeared unfazed. "Well, he's been on his honeymoon trip. He's not been in touch with us."

"Am I to believe he hasn't communicated with his children in over a month?" Herr Zeller growled.

Max arched an eyebrow. "How many men do you know who communicate with their children while on their _honeymoon_?"

Blinking, the _Gauleiter_ shifted awkwardly. "Upon his return," he snapped. "He'll fill out his proper position in the new order."

_They want him…to fill his proper position? What do they want him to do?_ The air felt heavier, harder to breathe. Maybe it was too saturated with the Nazis' ridiculous injustice. _And what will they do if Father refuses?_

"Naturally." Max's voice was scathingly cold. "And may I congratulate you, or should I say, your _people,_ in allowing the festival to go on tonight as planned."

Herr Zeller's eyes hardened. "Why should it not go on? Nothing in Austria has changed. Singing and music will show this to the world."

He stared forcefully at Uncle Max, daring him not to believe that everything in Austria was as happy and peaceful as could be.

"Austria is the _same_."His arm stabbed the air again. "Heil Hitler!"

Not even bothering to see a reaction, he and his blank-faced comrade turned and left as quickly as they'd came. Liesl struggled not to flinch at each clipped footstep.

Uncle Max looked after them, his expression unreadable. But his coffee eyes held a somber, quiet sadness as he raised his right hand and said "Heil Hitler."

He turned back to them and the sadness in his eyes was gone. "Come, let's go home." He smiled.

"Why was he so cross?" Gretl asked him, confusion marking her features.

"Everybody's cross these days." Max replied unconcernedly.

Marta piped up, "Maybe the flag with the black spider on it makes people nervous."

Liesl bit her lip. _They're too young to be dealing with these things. The only thing they need to be concerned about at their age is having fun and being children._

"Will Father be in trouble?" she asked. Maybe Max would have an idea.

"He doesn't have to be. The thing to do is to get along with everybody. Remember that tonight at the concert."

The response wasn't exactly satisfactory. She wanted a definite answer. If Father was in any danger, she wanted to _know_.

"Are we really going to sing before a lot of people?" Brigitta's voice cut through her thoughts.

Max fished out the program, and they all leaned over to see. "Look – the von Trapp family singers: Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Brigitta, Kurt, Marta and Gretl."

Liesl smiled weakly, trying to refocus on the concert. In these troubling times, she decided, it was probably best just not to think about it all. But it was harder, now – the Nazis wanted something with Father.

_Maybe Herr Zeller just meant that he needs to act loyal to the Third Reich when he said "proper position". Maybe all they're going to do is scold him for not flying that stupid flag. I'm sure that's it. They're just angry that not everyone absolutely worships them._ She told herself.

For the time being, she was at least somewhat reassured. _I just need to focus on the festival. We'll do well and make our parents proud._ Performing music she loved with people she loved would make her feel better for sure, not to mention seeing her name on the program felt wonderfully professional and adult. _Everything will be fine._ She thought. _Just have faith and keep hope._

Just as they were all about to get in the car, Liesl heard her name being called.

"Liesl! Liesl!"

The voice fell on her ears like silver. She recognized it immediately, but she still held her breath as she turned around.

Her face split into a grin. "Rolfe!"

It _was_ him. There he was, jogging towards her, all big blue eyes and strong hands and golden hair. God, she'd missed him so much. Now they could pick up right where they left off. Liesl's spirits lifted like a balloon. _Maybe some luck is returning, after all._

Rolfe hadn't become any less handsome in a month. The sight of him sent an ache into her chest that she'd been missing. She noticed that he had a new uniform now – light brown – but it didn't really matter to her. She was just glad to see him again.

He stopped in front of her, and she opened her mouth eagerly.

"I'm so glad to see you." She said. "It's been so – "

"Good afternoon." He cut in. He handed her a telegram. His face was like a blank sheet, not at all like the bashful boy she remembered from the gazebo. "Give this to your father as soon as he's home."

Liesl's smile slipped a little at the edges. _How odd._ This wasn't exactly the way she'd thought their reunion would be. On second thought, maybe he _did_ look a little different. A bit older, his frame more filled out, his features harder. _Silly. There isn't anything different at all. He's probably just acting so formal because he's busy and doesn't have a lot of time to talk._

"Father's on his honeymoon." She told him. _Maybe he'll ask me about it. Then I can tell him all about Mother. He hasn't heard anything about her yet, I'm sure he'd like her –_

"I know," he answered, as if it were obvious.

She blinked. "You do?"

"We make it our business to know everything about everyone." Rolfe said. There was nothing in his eyes. None of the affection and shyness she'd seen in him last time.

_We._ A terrible suspicion entered Liesl's heart, and all of a sudden he seemed very different indeed. She shoved the notion away. Of course he wasn't a Nazi.

"Who's we?" she asked tentatively. _Come on, Rolfe, just say it's your telegram company or something, I won't mind if they know things like that. Probably a lot of people in Salzburg know that Father's remarried. As long as you're not one of_ them _._

"See that he gets it." He repeated firmly.

The tall, swastika-clad buildings of Salzburg seemed to be drawing inwards, threatening to crush her under a pile of bricks. _He's not a Nazi. He's not. He's too nice; he's too_ good _to be one of them._

"What is it?" she breathed.

"A telegram from Berlin."

She had to do something to fix this situation, and fast. She smiled, looked up at him teasingly. "Don't you want to come tonight, and deliver it yourself?" Maybe he was just too embarrassed to be affectionate in front of her family. Maybe if she let him know it was alright he'd drop the business-like manner.

Rolfe's face remained as impassive as before. "I'm occupied with more important matters." He said.

There was not a breath of regret, of apology in his words. She knew him well enough to detect the subtle tones in his voice that meant he was joking – but she couldn't detect them now. This was a vacant, stiff dismissal and there wasn't any sort of love in it.

Liesl's heart beat in her throat. The warm, starry memories of his lips on hers, and the hazy beauty of nighttime, and the sweet airy words they had exchanged with each other were shattered, and pierced Liesl right in her sixteen year-old heart.

She felt like a doll abandoned on a grimy street.

"And your father better be, too, if he knows what's good for him." Rolfe was saying. The shards drove in deeper.

His eyes were the dark blue of a vein. He turned away from her.

"Rolfe!" she called after him in a last, desperate attempt to grasp his attention.

He showed no response, just continued walking away. There was a terrible sense of finality in his footsteps. Her eyes dropped to the white telegram in her palm. _It's a telegram from Berlin._ She remembered Herr Zeller's words from only minutes ago.

_"He'll fill out his proper position in the new order."_

She stared after Rolfe, and her heart was swept away with him, and the spaces between her ribs ached with realization.

He'd been bitten by the spider.

Liesl's eyes slid over to a Nazi flag – they weren't at all hard to find – and it seemed to stare back at her like a slashed, dark eye, terrifying in its infallibility and sinister in its magnetism. We win, it seemed to tell her. Didn't you _know_ we would?

"Liesl?" Kurt called softly.

She returned to the car.

* * *

Liesl slipped into her room, shut the door, and leaned back against it heavily. She let out a shaky sigh.

_"You cry a little. Then you wait for the sun to come up. It always does."_

She was grateful for Mother's advice, but was there really nothing else she could do? It didn't feel like the sun would ever be out again.

She'd spent years as a little girl dreaming about having someone who she could trust and love, someone who would make her laugh and smooth her tears away with his thumb and knit his forever with hers. But she'd never thought about the aftermath. Love had always seemed like something you fall into and stay in forever, not something that blooms between two people and then wilts without explanation.

"Oh, you stupid little girl." She murmured to herself, and collapsed onto her bed.

She'd done a good job of keeping the tears at bay. She'd kept them during the ride back to the villa, while greeting her parents, and while talking with Mother, but now she was alone and exhausted and the very atmosphere was black with the ashes of silly, failed longings. She wished she could've talked with Mother a bit more, but Father wanted to speak to her, and clearly it was something serious.

_So on top of everything else,_ she thought wearily. _Father might be in trouble with the Third Reich._

Everything was all wrong.

She pulled her pillow into her arms and buried her face in it. Liesl was heartbroken, and the only thing she knew to do was wait until it was over.

_I'm so confused. I don't understand why Rolfe doesn't like me anymore._ Tears welled in her eyes. _Did I do something wrong? Or is it because Father doesn't approve of Hitler?_

Rolfe had always seemed so perfect to her. He was handsome, polite, shy, smart, and kind. His eyes reminded her of breezy summer skies and full moons. All those nights by his side had been soft and infinite and hopeful. She was young and she loved him as much as a sixteen year-old girl could love a boy. And he had always appeared to feel the same way – how could he end everything so abruptly?

_There are so many things I don't know. So many things I just don't understand about love and politics and people. And all this time I've been thinking I'm so grown-up._ She bit her lip. _I really am just a naïve little girl._

All she had wanted was to explore the world of love and growing up with Rolfe – she still did. Loving someone sounded so exciting and poetic. And Rolfe had been there and he'd liked her in that half-fumbling, half-sophisticated way that only he could pull off, and that was really all it had taken for her to fall for him. Maybe she was more in love with the idea of being in love than she ever was with him.

But, like so many other things, she just didn't know.

The only thing Liesl really knew was that she wanted him back. _It seems like I'm destined to always be abandoned by someone._ She thought. _As soon as I get back my parents back I lose the first boy I ever fell in love with. I would never trade Father and Mother for him, of course. They mean so much more to me, but…why does someone always have to be leaving me behind?_

Her shoulders shook with sobs as she cried into her pillow. She'd fallen for him without hesitation, but now she'd reached the bottom of the fall and her bones were broken. She was sixteen, confused, and in love, and it felt like the world was ending. It seemed there was something almost terrible about this sixteenth year of life, how the sky could seem spangled with possibility, but as soon as your fingers grazed the future it was revealed to be a cheap, gauzy nothing.

There was a sharp knock on her door. She stifled her tears and called, "What is it?"

The door cracked open, and her father's voice came through.

"Liesl, I have something to tell you."

There was a heavy pause.

"We're leaving Austria. Tonight."


	6. Chapter 6

_"Soon madness has worn you down. It's easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you're worthless, you agree." -_ Marya Hornbacher

* * *

Rolfe had to admit – he could have handled talking to Liesl far, far, better.

He should've just avoided her. He should've just gone all the way up to the Captain's house and given the telegram to Franz. But as he passed by the auditorium in town, his ears picked out her name among the other noises around him. Almost unconsciously, he found himself slowing down and turning his head. It was _his_ Liesl, and all her siblings. He'd heard her name when one of her sisters had asked her a question.

_See? Herr Zeller was right. Here you are, getting distracted._ He decided, since he was there, to go ahead and give her the telegram to test himself, to see if his willpower could stand up to her charms. He knew that the Führer would be proud of him if he managed.

And, well, he did. He managed to remain coolly polite and to let her know that there were far more important things happening in Austria. He was a National Socialist and innocent infatuations couldn't be allowed to occupy his attention, not until things were more stable. He wasn't really sure just what instability Herr Zeller thought there still was in Austria, because most people seemed glad the Nazis were there, but maybe he knew something Rolfe didn't.

But letting Liesl know those things…it really didn't feel as good as he thought it would.

And if he was being honest with himself, it made him feel terrible.

He should be _proud_ of himself and he knew it. He'd rejected the idle things that distract men from what's important. But he didn't feel proud at all as she looked up at him with wounded eyes, and it was just so _hard_ because he had wanted to do all he could to stop her from being hurt, and now it was _him_ doing the hurting.

When she'd asked him, "Don't you want to come tonight, and deliver it yourself?" he'd almost been overwhelmed with the urge to say "Yes"; he could just feel his mouth forming the word. A traitorous little thought flickered in the back of his mind. _You're old enough to make these decisions for yourself. You don't have to listen to what Herr Zeller says._

But he stopped. This wasn't just about what Herr Zeller wanted. This was about what Hitler wanted, too.

Rolfe envisioned the Führer standing behind him, a fatherly hand on his shoulder, and the "Yes" crumbled in his mouth. _You have to be obedient, remember? Aren't you loyal? You're not_ really _so weak-willed, are you?_

Rolfe remembered, then – that Nazis who didn't follow orders weren't good Nazis.

Nazis who didn't follow orders got punished. Punished badly.

_You're occupied with more important matters._ The imaginary hand pushed down hard enough to hurt. _**Tell her.**_ _There's a good boy…_

He'd sworn to himself that he'd be loyal his Führer no matter what, that he'd die if the Führer asked it of him, so really, what else could he do _but_ obey?

_(And maybe a small part of him acted not out of loyalty, but of_ fear _)_

As he'd turned away from Liesl, he'd deafened his ears against her call; tried to dilute the guilt filling his lungs by reminding himself how pleased the Führer would be if he knew. _I shouldn't feel bad. If I feel bad, it only means I'm not as good a Nazi as I should be. This is only temporary, anyway. When people are used to the new order Liesl and I can be together again. She'll probably forgive me. Surely this hasn't hurt her that bad, so don't get emotional over it._ He told himself, gnawing on the inside of his cheek.

After checking to make sure any other telegrams were taken care of by other employees, Rolfe sullenly headed home. He kind of wished he had some more jobs to do. He didn't want to have empty time that would inevitably be filled up by thinking too hard about things that he shouldn't. He didn't have _anything_ to be remorseful about. He _didn't._

His mother wasn't at home; probably out running an errand, but there was a letter from Gerhard, his friend from Berlin, on the table. Rolfe forced a smile. It was far harder to do than he would've liked. emHearing from my friend will cheer me up. Once he climbed the stairs to his room, he slit open the envelope and made himself focus on the angles of each letter.

_Dear Rolfe,_

_Everything's great here in Berlin, and I'm sure it is over there in Salzburg, too. It's wonderful that Austria's returned to Germany. I guess we're sort of part of the same country now, huh? Anyway, I think things may finally be going well with that Annelie Bähr I've been flirting with_

Rolfe's throat felt like it was closing up, and he skipped over the next few lines. The charismatic Gerhard's luck with girls was the last thing he needed to read at the moment. The memory of Liesl's soft lips flashed in his mind, and he squirmed. _Forget it, already. You did the right thing._ He started reading again where he was sure Gerhard was done blabbering about Annelie Bähr or whoever.

_Something interesting happened yesterday afternoon. Remember how I'm part of the HJ-Streifendienst? Well, we were out patrolling and some old man with a yellow star on his coat muttered something as we walked by, and Alban Stoppelbein (that's my Hitler Youth leader) grabbed him by his dirty collar and in this very calm voice asked him to repeat what he'd said. It was pretty funny, because you could see the dumb Jew sweating. That's the way Jews are, of course – they'll say things against the Reich under their breath but they're too cowardly to say it to your face._

_Alban shook him a bit and that just set the crazy Jew off like a madman. He started yelling about how unjust we are, ripped his yellow star off his jacket, threw it at Alban's feet, and then the idiot spit on it. So Alban and the rest of us had to beat him up. He'll have some awful bruises and a broken nose to remember us by, so hopefully he'll know his place from now on. Stupid old Jew. Alban told him he was lucky he got away with just that and not an arrest, which is true. I felt a little bad at first. It's not easy, having to kick someone and make them bleed, especially when they're old and frail. But you just have to remind yourself – he's a Jew. He's an enemy to the Reich. Sometimes people have to get hurt for the good of everyone else, especially when certain people are better than others._

_As we were leaving him there he said something along the lines of "Everyone's afraid of the Nazis. How could a government that rules by fear be good?" We decided that it wasn't worth our time to kick him around anymore, so we just left him on the street, even after that comment. Filthy Jew – if anyone is afraid of us, it means they shouldn't be here anyway. If they don't want what we want for Germany, they aren't real Germans. Imagine – any good, sane person being afraid of the Nazis!_

Rolfe swallowed. Hadn't _he_ had those moments of fear? Lying in bed the night he'd kissed Liesl as his brain turned the pounding of rain into the pounding of Nazi fists, feeling unease skitter across his flesh as his Hitler Youth pistol lay in his palms, having the weight of the Führer's hand warn him that punishment lay ahead if he didn't reject Liesl. And now…reading about an old Jew being beaten up in the street, imagining the red froth of his nose and the green flowering of bruises on flesh, he again felt squeamish at the possibility of violence. For God's sake, he'd never even been in a fist-fight. Nobody had ever found him interesting enough to bother picking a fight with him.

Did being scared of hurting and killing people who were bad make him a coward?

He didn't want to be a coward.

Shaking his head in an effort to clear it, he continued reading.

_Anyway, you mentioned something in your last letter about feeling insecure or whatever. It's funny, because Wolfram Hellewege was telling me almost the same thing the other day. I'm sure you remember him; he was one of the boys with us at Hitler's speech those months ago. That sure was a great night. We all got drunk, and you were the only one who'd never really drank before so you were stumbling around long before the rest of us and we had a good laugh at you. Wolfram was trying to teach you the words to Horst-Wessel-Lied, and you two sang this horrible, drunken rendition of it. It was hilarious._

Unsurprisingly, Rolfe couldn't remember any drunk singing of the Nazi Party anthem at all. He hadn't even bothered to learn the names of Gerhard's companions, so he had no idea who Wolfram Hellewege was. He sighed, running a hand over his face. Gerhard and his nameless friends having "a good laugh" at him – yet another thing that he didn't need to read.

_But as I was saying, Wolfram's been complaining about a self-esteem plunge ever since Alban Stoppelbein started getting onto him about how poorly he's doing at the Hitler Youth sports (because he is terrible, really). And then you write me this letter moping about how you feel like you're not a good enough Nazi and whatever else and I can't help but roll my eyes, honestly. Good Lord! I thought whining and sniveling was a job for girls. I don't know, Rolfe, just be yourself or something. I've never had this problem. Toughen up a little!_

_Heil Hitler!_

_\- Gerhard_

Rolfe let the letter drift down onto his bed and bit his lip. Had he mentioned anything in his last letter to Gerhard about insecurity? That wasn't something he'd normally do, because he was well aware Gerhard would make fun of him for something like that. When he'd written that letter it had been right after Hitler Youth and he'd been exhausted, so maybe it wasn't a surprise that he hadn't been careful about what he was writing.

_Even so, does Gerhard really have no better advice?_ He thought. _He just doesn't understand. Why would I want to be myself?_ It sounded horribly cliché in a depressed teenager sort of way, and he knew it, but it was the truth. National Socialism was bigger than "Rolfe", was bigger than everything else in this shallow world he lived in – in this shallow _self_ he lived in – and Gerhard had entirely, frustratingly missed the point of…well, whatever it was he'd said.

The Nazis were at the very center of his identity. What did a painfully ordinary Austrian boy have to offer to Germany – to the world? He _knew_ that he was only important as one part of a whole. One individual in the master race. One Nazi in the machine that carried out the Führer's will. _Who would I be without Nazism?_ Rolfe thought. _Not anyone I'd want to be, that's for sure..._

That's why he was concerned about these occasional…doubts he had. The beguiling urge to disobey the _Gauleiter's_ orders about Liesl. The wonderings about Hillel and his family, and the nature of the Jews. The uncertainty about using his gun. He _had_ get rid of these misgivings – _What would the Führer think?_

If he wasn't one of them, he was nothing but a paper boy in a very paper world.

Rolfe felt a headache building behind his eyes. _I feel so tired lately_. He winced and fell into his bed. _I'll just take a nap. I'll feel better afterwards._ He let his mind wander as he started to drift off – and there was Liesl, dancing, skin like glass and her eyes incandescent…

The image of her made him feel like the air in his lungs was frozen. His eyes snapped open. Why couldn't he just let it go? I've never felt this guilty in my life. He drew in a deep breath, hoping it would make the aching in his head and chest cavity go away. It didn't work.

Gottverdammt, _I hate myself._

Rolfe blinked. Now, where did that thought come from? He'd always thought it a rather sad thing for people to hate themselves, but perhaps he had reason to. He was weak – his willpower was being felled by the mere eyes of a sixteen year-old girl.

Yes. That was it; that was the throbbing, hollow feeling in his chest. At some level he'd already known. He hated himself. He hated himself for creating that _look_ in Liesl von Trapp's eyes, that _why-are-you-doing-this-to-me_ look that made her eyes all dewy and battered when he'd never seen them anything other than bright and starry. He hated himself for even _caring_ because things like that ought to be so trivial to him but they _weren't_. He hated himself because all he wanted to do was follow the almighty Hitler in this quest for a more perfect humanity, but it felt like he'd never be _good_ enough for him and he _had_ to be good enough for him because if he wasn't there wasn't a single damn worthwhile thing about him (which he knew because Herr Zeller had said so, and Herr Zeller was personally appointed by the Führer so he had to be right) and he hated himself for that most of all, all the fears and doubts and moments of weakness that meant that he was still a failure. Still a stupid, tiresome little child.

There was not room for anything less than perfection, not in Hitler's Austria.

What was it Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth Leader, had said? _"The individual member's value to the whole is determined by the degree to which he is permeated by the idea. The best Hitler Youth, irrespective or rank and office, is he who completely surrenders himself to the National Socialist world view."_

Rolfe drew in another breath. Yes – he needed to remember that. He needed to completely surrender himself; to obey without question any order and wholeheartedly believe any idea set before him. He couldn't afford distrust, and he couldn't afford weakness. They would ruin him.

As he began to drift off again, he forced himself to think of Hitler's speech. That night was still rich in his mind, that enchanted night under the stars of Berlin, with a future glorious beyond imagination right at his fingers… Rolfe floated in the memory. Swastikas left ashy imprints on his heart. The glowing words of Germany's savior sank through his pores and sewed into his veins; each oily, dark _Jew_ ; each strong, pure _Aryan_. The crowd was charged with a force that could set the entire world on fire. Every word the Führer said and every move he made held a hypnotic tug, and all the audience could do was stare worshipfully and think **_I will believe anything you tell me; I will follow you to damnation._**

Drifting in the exhilarant fanaticism of the memory, Rolfe whispered the words to a saying he'd been taught at Hitler Youth meetings:

_"Führer, my Führer, given to me by God._

_Protect and preserve my life for long._

_You saved Germany in time of need._

_I thank you for my daily bread._

_Be with me for a long time; do not leave me, Führer,_

_my Führer, my faith, my light_

_Hail to my Führer!"_

* * *

It was dark in Salzburg that night, the kind of dark out that made one vaguely unsettled. The moon, usually bright and clear, let off a sickly, faltering light. A music festival had ended, an abbey had been disturbed, and a family of nine was being hunted down like prey by boys with black spiders on their arms. Rolfe was scouting the perimeter of the Abbey, trying so, so hard to be a good Nazi and not be terrified.

Surprise – it wasn't working.

This was _not_ the way things were supposed to happen.

It couldn't be more than ten minutes ago that he'd been at the music festival. That stupid _, stupid_ festival. He'd had to stand guard and watch as Liesl sang with that voice of hers, wearing drab traveling clothes as a costume and still looking so pretty he could hardly stand it. He tried not to stare at her. Until he knew he could afford distractions, she couldn't be his. Liesl looked somewhat sad, maybe a little nervous, and he fervently hoped that it wasn't because of what he'd said to her earlier.

If he hadn't been focused on her face alone, he would've noticed that her brothers and sisters had the same expression.

Herr Detweiler had announced the Captain's entry into the Third Reich's navy. _So that's what was in that telegram today._ Despite himself, Rolfe had felt a flicker of hope. Without Liesl's father there, it would be a lot simpler to see her again, when things were more stable, of course. And maybe – just maybe – with her father serving the Reich, it would be easier for him to convince her of its goodness. Then she'd understand why he'd been so distant, forgive him, and everything would be alright again.

But now, all of a sudden, something he had never anticipated had occurred. There wasn't a moment to even process what was happening, because suddenly the von Trapps had dissipated into the night and _quick, we have to catch them!_

They were trying to escape. _Actually_ trying to evade the Nazis. Was the Captain out of his mind? Rolfe had always known Georg von Trapp was not an honorable man, but he'd never imagined him to be such a coward that he would put his wife and children in danger just to avoid military service.

The threat of losing Liesl for good glared him in the face, cutting as a Nazi flashlight. What if they managed to escape? What then? And what if they didn't? Would her father be arrested or forced to join the navy anyways? Actually, scratch that, he didn't care what happened to the Captain. His mind just kept pumping out _LieslLieslLiesl._ If her family was caught, what would happen to them? Would she, her stepmother, and her siblings merely be allowed to return to their villa, or would they get a _harsher_ punishment?

He was scared for her and scared of losing her. He knew she wasn't his top priority, and that it was foolish to be thinking of _her_ safety when he had a mission, but God, it was so hard _not_ to.

He didn't want her to leave Austria. He wanted her right there in Salzburg, with him. The future he'd expected, one where he and Liesl would reunite after a while and experience the formation of Europe as Hitler envisioned it, together, was broken. It was just so _unfair._

_Damn Captain von Trapp._ Damn _him. He's ruined everything_.

As he nervously examined the ground surrounding the Abbey for footprints, Rolfe thought about what had happened as he, other Hitler Youth boys, and Lieutenant Slusser had raced towards the Abbey in the car. One of the boys had yelled above the wind streaming past:

"Lieutenant, are we permitted to shoot the Captain?"

" _Ja_ , Gotthilf, of course!" The Lieutenant had snapped.

"And what of the Baroness and the children, sir?"

"Do whatever you have to do."

Rolfe had swallowed anxiously, staring at the Lieutenant. _Do whatever you have to?_ In what _possible_ circumstance would he need to shoot Liesl's siblings and Liesl's stepmother?

Everything was happening so fast. He'd never imagined the Captain would be so utterly stupid; never imagined the threat of him and Liesl collapsing into dust could be this real.

_Just this afternoon I acted like she was a perfect stranger. Now she may be whisked away to Switzerland before I can explain why I_ had _to._

The courage that he wanted so badly to possess had run off and was quivering in a dark corner.

But he couldn't be frightened now, not when he was needed for a real mission. The von Trapps had to be caught. There was no other option. He'd just have to hope that the rest of the Captain's family would be let off lightly once they were. Hitler wanted Georg von Trapp, and Hitler must be obeyed.

Rolfe shook away his chaotic thoughts. His breathing was shallow. _Remain calm. Follow your orders. That's all you can do._

He climbed up some stairs, and they opened to what looked like a cemetery – imposing silver gravestones stood in the darkness, dispassionately watching the fierce hunt for a traitor and his family. Off to the side were several iron gates, which blocked off more stone structures. _Could they be hiding there?_ But he saw a group of his fellow Nazis just leaving, so they must have already searched. _Why on earth haven't we found them yet?_ He started to cross the graveyard to follow them, but he froze.

He thought he'd heard something.

He wasn't sure what – the faintest breath, a gasp, barely a tremor on the atmosphere. Rolfe hesitated, waiting to see if he could hear something else. Maybe he'd just imagined it.

But if he wanted to do his duty…shouldn't he stay, just to make sure?

He slowly continued in the direction he'd been going. If the von Trapps were hiding here, he didn't want to give any sign that he might have detected them. He ducked behind a gravestone and listened. Waited.

He found that his hand was shaking as it pressed against the grave marker, and he fought to calm it. The air was dust coating his throat. _God, Jesus, Adolf Hitler, give me strength…_

And then – the patter of cautious footsteps severed the silence. Rolfe's heart was in his throat, adrenaline electrifying his blood and forcing it to rush to too fast a rhythm. Instinct screamed at him to leap from his hiding place; _YOU'VE GOT THEM NOW–_

The beam of his torch fell on them like some cruel spotlight. Seven children, a young Baroness, and the Captain himself. They were paralyzed, stricken; the eyes of the youngest round as marbles. The light turned them all harshly pale, and the unblemished terror on their faces pierced Rolfe to the core. _He'd_ caused that kind of panic. On _children._

And Liesl – oh, God. Her eyes were things of pristine, cerulean beauty and she just…she just kept on _staring_ at him. All her emotions were lettered clearly in her gaze. Hurt. Betrayal. Disbelief. For a few dangerous seconds, all Rolfe's sense scattered, and all he could think of was the sugary taste of her on his mouth and how innocent and idiotically naïve and beautiful it all was -

_NO._ Not now, not now, not now. Why was he always getting distracted at these crucial moments? _Because I'm not a good enough Nazi, that's why_.

His frantic, hyperconscious mind picked up on the fact that Liesl had her father's eyes, and for a second he was repulsed – those eyes he loved so much were a product of the hated Captain.

"Rolfe," Liesl said desperately. "Please!" Her words came out broken, staggered.

He had never wanted to hear her say his name like that. Never, never like that. Her pretty pink heart was breaking open right in front of him _and it was all his fault._

Tears formed pearls on her eyelashes. Rolfe and Liesl's gazes interlocked, tangled. She was silently pleading with him not to blow his whistle, not to betray how much she'd _trusted_ him, and he was painfully reminded of rainy skies and roseate dresses and moon-kissed cheeks…

His heart was gouging itself to bloody pieces.

He continued to stand, unmoving. The world felt like it was cruelly tipping over; about to send him indifferently off the edge and he just – he just could not _move_ ; his brain couldn't formulate any sort of action to take –

Captain von Trapp lunged towards the iron grate. Rolfe's hand whipped his gun out of his belt without him thinking, like each finger had a conscious of its own. His panic-dazed mind found time to marvel at the action. How very different from how he'd held it with nervous, immature wariness the first night it was his.

The Captain stopped, not taking his piercing eyes off Rolfe. "Maria," he said smoothly, his voice low. "Children."

Liesl and her siblings fled down the steps he'd just climbed. Liesl's head was down, and all he wanted was for her to _look_ at him again; he wanted to yell to her but he couldn't because his concern was supposed to be Hitler, not this _girl_ -

She disappeared from sight. Everything had splintered and the shards were slipping right through his fingers faster than he could even think, tearing his hands to ribbons while he desperately grasped at the last shreds of Rolfe&Liesl.

This – this – this couldn't be happening – this wasn't the way he'd planned for things to go at _all_. Rolfe's eyes danced between the Captain and the spot where Liesl had gone. He fought to reign in control of his pounding heart. _Verdammt_ , this was not supposed to _happen_!

Captain von Trapp was stepping towards him. A chilling smile played on his lips; his shadow leapt across the ground in huge dimensions. His aristocratic presence seemed to fill up the entire cemetery, and numb fear lanced through Rolfe. The Captain's eyes met his, and the blue of them reminded him of the Führer's.

Yes – the Führer! Focus, focus, he had to focus. _He_ was the one who'd found the von Trapps. Only he could capture the Captain now. It was all up to him. If he failed his Führer now… Rolfe blinked sweat out of his eyes. He felt sick, light-headed.

"It's you we want. Not them." He said. He tried to sound commanding, authoritative, but his voice trembled.

The Captain continued to move forward, his gaze fixed on Rolfe. He was as calm as if they were discussing the weather. "Put that down."

Rolfe's sweating fingers clenched his gun even tighter. He focused his eyes on the bloodless ridges of his knuckles. He had to be brave. "Rolfe" wouldn't be brave in this situation, but "Rolfe the Nazi" would. _Surrender yourself. Let them tell you what to do._

"Not another move," he hissed. "Or I'll…I'll shoot!"

Liesl's father was unaffected by the threat. He looked at Rolfe with a mix of contempt and…pity? Rolfe wished to God that the Captain would stop looking at him like that. He didn't need his pity. He didn't _want_ his pity. Why should he, when he was a soldier of the Fatherland, and von Trapp was a miserable traitor? Yes - he was doing the right thing - of _course_ he was -

"You're only a boy," Captain von Trapp said. "You don't _really_ belong to them."

Rolfe hated that. The Captain didn't have any idea what he was talking about - he belonged to the Nazis body and soul. He wanted to retort, to tell him that he wasn't a child, but in that moment he felt like one. The closer the Captain got, the smaller Rolfe felt, like wax collapsing in on itself when it got too close to heat. He had never felt so far from what Hitler wanted him to be. He was a scared little boy with no idea what to do, and part of him just wanted to drop the pistol and run.

The Captain continued to smile knowingly. His arctic-blue eyes bored into Rolfe, glinting from underneath the shadow of his hat. Beneath the drawling arrogance Rolfe could see a deadly serious warning in Georg von Trapp's eyes. Maybe the Captain wasn't just trying to scare him. Maybe he truly believed the Nazis were bad, maybe he knew something Rolfe didn't, and he looked so sincere and adult and almost paternal and like he knew what to do in this world that was becoming gradually scarier...

_No - no, stop, you're confusing everything!_ He couldn't succumb - he _couldn't_ be disobedient, no matter what -

"Stay where you are!"

"Come away with us," The Captain breathed. "Before it's too late."

Rolfe blinked. He couldn't mean it. Could he? What did he mean by "too late"? _What if I did go?_ Under the older man's gaze he was drowning in confusion and fear, and he was suddenly reminded of every time he'd caught a glimpse of National Socialism's dark undercurrent…

_"Imagine – any good, sane person being afraid of the Nazis!"_

But – Lieutenant Slusser had been okay with shooting women and children –

_"Aren't you loyal? You're not_ really _so weak-willed, are you?"_

But – reading about that old Jew being beaten up by Gerhard -

_"I thought you wanted to live for something greater than yourself. We're going to burn our mark onto the flesh of history. Don't you want to be a part of that?"_

But -

" _Alone you're nothing, but if you fulfill your duty as a link in the chain of the superior race, you are incredibly valuable."_

The dark strands of the Führer's sentences tightened themselves around Rolfe's racing heart.

"Not another step," he said. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn't stop them. "I'll kill you!"

Those words had never left his mouth before. But he _could_ kill him, this enemy of the Reich. It wouldn't be hard. It would be so easy. All he'd have to do is pull a finger back – and then gunpowder and fire, and a tidy circular hole in the Captain's strong chest. Rolfe could imagine it – the body of Liesl's father collapsing backwards – his hat tumbling off his head like an afterthought – and florid vermilion springing and spilling across this holy place's ground, a billion threads of thick red perfumed with tragedy, woven together and sprawled across the brick like a twisted sheet of fabric, indeed, very much like a Nazi flag…

He should do it, he could do it, he _would_ do it –

_But I_ can't –

"You give that to me, Rolfe."

"Did you hear me?" Rolfe cried. He fought for air. He could still see a dead Captain in his mind; could still see those Liesl-eyes wide and lifeless. "I'll kill you!"

Georg von Trapp was right in front of him now. " _Rolfe._ "

The seventeen year-old boy stared up at this man who was telling him all these things that he'd learned were lies lies lies. He was right there; Rolfe could shoot him and there was no way he could miss, but he could not do it.

He was too lost and too frightened to do it.

The Captain gripped Rolfe's pistol. Rolfe could do nothing but stare at him, looking for all the world like a desperate child lost on a cold night. He let go of the weapon. Or maybe the Captain just yanked it out of his grasp. He wasn't sure, but at any rate he was no longer holding it. He looked at the ground, tears burning his eyes, although what he was crying for, he didn't know.

The Captain spoke. "You'll _never_ be one of them."

At those words, the Führer's voice rang clear in Rolfe's mind. _He's right. You'll_ never _be of us. You've fallen for this Jew-sympathizer's manipulation. You've let your faith waver, for even a second. He was right in front of you! You must close your heart to compassion when it comes to people like him. Germany's children are strong, Germany's children are devoted, and_ you _, you weak little boy, have FAILED._

His breath snagged in his throat. _No -_

_Quick, now – you can still redeem yourself!_

Nazism was stitched into his soul and his self-worth, and _surely_ he could not be anything but one more pointless young body without them.

Even the Captain couldn't break this cage.

Rolfe's head snapped up. Fire burned in his fine, German blue eyes and his voice flew from his mouth and echoed off the somber walls.

" _Lieutenant!"_

The Captain's eyes widened in shock. He tore off down the steps, still clutching Rolfe's gun in his fist. Panicked, Rolfe ran in the opposite direction, gasping for breath.

"They're _here_ , Lieutenant, _they're here_!"

A wild race through the darkened halls of the Abbey. Nuns watched them like accusatory phantoms, and Rolfe's blood was like a river smashing and foaming around crags of rock and his throat was raw with the cold air –

The cars the cars _get in the car_ –

_Gottverdamt,_ they wouldn't – they wouldn't _start!_

And just like that, the von Trapp's were gone.

Stunningly, irrevocably…gone.

The other Hitler Youth boys told Rolfe he was shaking. He said, "sorry" and kept on doing it.

He would never see Liesl von Trapp again.

And he was a pathetic, worthless, stupid, superficial little boy.

He'd had the chance to prove himself. He'd had the chance to do something good for the Nazis. And he'd been too scared and too cowardly to take it.

When he went to sleep that night, he dreamed that he was in an extraordinarily small red room with Adolf Hitler. And he just kept on repeating _"I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself"_ over and over, until the walls were scrawled black with the words. The Führer didn't do anything but stare at him coldly with those magnetic azure eyes, up until Rolfe dissolved into tears, then Hitler snarled _"Don't cry you little coward, you little nothing,"_ and slapped him across the face with a force that jolted Rolfe into consciousness.

For the next few hours, as the sky gradually lightened into a sooty gray, Rolfe clasped his hands together and whispered "God, Jesus, Adolf Hitler," with the same frantic repetitiveness of all the "I hate myself's" in his dream without any idea what he was praying for, and eventually the God and Jesus fell away altogether, and a Good Nazi Boy with tears bleeding down his face breathed slurred "Adolf Hitler's" into the air like little doses of poison vapor, until fatigue dragged him back to his good, benevolent Führer and the small red room.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some historical notes:
> 
> That "prayer" Rolfe said, the "Führer, my Führer" one, was actually, legitimately recited at some Hitler Youth meetings, even though it sounds almost too ridiculous to be real. The Hitler Youth was really quite a creepy organization, made even creepier by what Hitler said about them to his buddies in 1938:
> 
> "This youth learns nothing but to think German and to act German...these boys enter our organization at the age of ten...then four years later they come from the Jungvolk into the Hitler Youth, and we keep them there for another four years, and then we definitely don't put them back into the hands of the originators of our old classes and status barriers; rather we take them straight into the Party or into the Labor Front, the SA, or the SS, the NSKK and so on. And if they are there for another two years or a year and a half and still haven't become complete National Socialists, then they go into the Labor Service and are polished for another six or seven months, all with a symbol, the German spade. And any class consciousness or pride of status that may be left here and there is taken over by the Wehrmacht for further treatment for two years, and when they come back after two, three, or four years, we take them straight into the SA, SS, and so on again, so that they shall in no case suffer a relapse, **and they will never be free again as long as they live."**


	7. Chapter 7

_"Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness."_ – F. Scott Fitzgerald, _The Diamond as Big as the Ritz_

* * *

Salzburg looked so small from up on the mountain.

It was strange to see it looking so small, so insignificant in the vast green landscape. Liesl's entire life had been there. Almost every important thing that had happened to her had happened in that city, and at the time they'd all seemed so hugely momentous. But as she looked down on her home for a final time…well, she felt rather small, too.

She felt like a different Liesl von Trapp than the one who'd resided in the grand villa down in Salzburg; the one who had believed in love at first glance and twirled girlishly in gazebos. The one who had thought herself so perfectly mature, so ready to leap into this life that she'd imagined as refined, adult, glittering.

But the world no longer seemed so wonderful and civilized after all. People didn't either. The line between the princes and the villains had been blurred like ink on wet paper, and even shy boys with peppermint kisses could hold guns in trembling hands.

She'd been so eager to grow up, her imagination constructing a future reminiscent of idealistic, romantic fairy tales. Womanhood had seemed like an alluring place of mystery and adventure. _To have that kind of innocence again…_ Liesl bit her lip. She felt like such a fool, and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry at herself.

She had wanted to be in love so much that she naïvely dropped her heart into the hands of the first boy who ever returned her childish affections. What exquisitely stupid little clichés they were. Songs in gazebos and callow, vague conversations had been inflated by her mind into the seeds of True Love, and now Liesl wondered if she ever knew Rolfe as a _person_ or anything beyond an idea… She didn't understand him, didn't understand how he could believe in the Nazis so completely, how anyone could be capable of that kind of betrayal. And yet, for reasons she couldn't explain, he hadn't been able to bring himself to pull the trigger.

_Should I hate Rolfe for what he's done?_ In a way, she did. She hated that he'd almost been willing to kill, to force her to relive the crushing grief she had felt when her mother's body succumbed to illness five years ago. But the stubborn blossoms of affection she felt for him were still rooted in her heart, albeit shaken by the events of last night. _God,_ he'd hurt her so much. Her heart was mangled, and much as she didn't want to she _missed_ him, missed the neat angles of his face and the boyish earnestness of his voice and the way he had made her feel like the shimmering dust of stars was drifting between every atom of her skin.

_But how could he do what he did? And who is he, really?_

Even after hours in her bed spent thinking about him, reconstructing every shadow on his face and every fleck of blue in his eyes, she didn't understand Rolfe at all.

All Liesl really knew was that she'd greatly underestimated just how close someone seemingly innocent could bring themselves to taking human life, just how dark and merciless the world could be.

Humans, it seemed, were no less blind than the washed-out fish swimming aimlessly in the deepest parts of the sea. Dumb enough to go mad over one another and tie rushed knots with someone else's destiny. Dumb enough to believe in the immense importance of their own lifetime.

She felt very small, indeed.

"Liesl?" Mother's voice cut into her thoughts.

She realized she'd been slowing down and struggled to force her feet faster over the rocky ground.

Mother wordlessly grasped her hand and squeezed it. Even her former governess didn't seem to know what to say, but the simple gesture was comforting anyway.

Liesl looked at her family. Friederich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Marta, and little Gretl, with her arms clinging to Father's shoulders. All these people who were a part of her, who she couldn't imagine life without. The past five years had been a grief-filled, dismal period in her family, but even after everything that had happened here they were. Loving, tight-knit, and determined to never rip themselves apart again. _At least I have them._ She thought. _They'll never abandon me, no matter what._

It was March 1938. In the autumn of 1939, the world would be devoured by the red maw of war. Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Australia, America, the Pacific, Asia – all would be swallowed. Cities of intricate history would disintegrate into atoms of dust and rubble, futures would burn in the flames of hatred, supposedly civil people would relinquish themselves readily to savagery, corpses would scatter across the continents by the millions. Humans would turn into numbers needled onto flesh and then into ashes hemming the bricks of a chimney, boys would turn into monsters, and souls too saturated with spider venom would rot.

But for now, nobody knew of that. For now, the crisp wind of the mountains, the breathtaking beauty of the earth, and the promise of her family gave Liesl the faintest spark of hope. There were many things she didn't understand. Sadness was still heavy in her chest, and Rolfe still lingered confusingly in her heart. But maybe it would be alright. She had her brothers and her sisters; she had her parents. She watched as Father glanced back at his wife with a weary but loving gaze. _Their romance hasn't been a fairy tale,_ she thought. _But that doesn't make it any less beautiful._

The world may not be the same as her past naïve vision. But it wasn't devoid of joy, either.

And maybe – just maybe – the sun would come up, after all.


	8. Chapter 8

" _The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it."_ – Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the Third Reich

* * *

When Rolfe came across Herr Zeller mere days after the von Trapps had gone, the _Gauleiter_ told him,

"Heinrich Himmler – the SS chief, you know – has moved into the Captain's former villa. It's really a very nice house; much more suitable for someone of Herr Himmler's character. He's had that ridiculous gazebo torn down, too. It was such an unpractical little structure, don't you think?"

and Rolfe did a truly brilliant job of nodding his head and pretending that he didn't care at all.

When September, 1939 rolled around and Germany entered what would surpass even the Great War, he didn't hesitate to enlist. After all, there was nothing much to stay for in Salzburg. ( _But do pieces of yourself, your childhood and your family and your entire life, count as_ nothing _?)_ Duty and sacrifice, that's what the Führer said was important, and his little self was rather disposable when it was going towards the Fatherland, wasn't it?

Yes. Quite disposable.

* * *

**May 4th, 1945. Berlin, Germany.**

Berlin was quieter than it had been in a while – gone were the bombs and the shelling and the explosions. For twelve years the capital of Germany had been ruled by a sanguine flag, and so it was now – but where it had once been emblazoned with the dark seductiveness of a black spider, there was now the proud, burnished yellow of a hammer, a sickle, and a star.

Everything was over. And Rolfe, now twenty-four going on twenty-five, was unconscious in a stranger's bed and blissfully unaware of it.

Rolfe had flung himself head-first into the Second World War at eighteen, and watched a planet go up in flames. He'd never known things could _burn_ so much, as men in the clouds dropped dark gifts of destruction upon the earth and everything just went up in a terrible, blazing wail. Who knew the world had so much within it that it could flame and smolder and _roar_ for so very long? He'd watched as the past flew away mournfully on scarlet ashy winds, and boys flung bullets into each other because that's what they were supposed to _do_ to the enemy. He had known a sky baked in the heat of bombs, scratched up by the winging paths of airplanes, and punctured by bullet holes. He'd tasted the chemical tang of sulfur, rot, and terror as it sopped the air; felt millions of dust and ash grains crammed into the little cups of his teeth.

He had witnessed so many deaths he couldn't even begin to count them all.

Often it felt like the war was infinite, a string of daily Armageddons that didn't have any origin or end. Sometimes it seemed the entire world was bowing under the weight of all the blood. But Rolfe had never had to look anyone directly into their face and kill them, not in this whole war. He must have killed someone, though, because you can't spend six years firing at faceless men firing at you and miss someone every single time. Some family somewhere had cried over the death of a son who had one of Rolfe's bullets tucked into his skull, but he locked thoughts like that into the back of his mind, because Brave Nazi Soldiers couldn't afford to have any compassion for the enemy, now could they?

But now that rabid, passionate violence had all but left Europe, and everything was merely numb and exhausted. Once it had seemed as if the globe was staining itself red; with fire, with gore, with flags. But now the dominating color was gray. The air was gray and Berlin was gray and the light that limped in through a window and collapsed wearily onto Rolfe's face was gray, too. He had been asleep for just over three days straight, two days past the ending of what later be known as the Battle of Berlin, but now was the time for him to wake up.

And now was the time for the world to come crashing down again.

When his eyes struggled open, the first thing he saw was the waiflike face of a girl leaning over him. She couldn't have been more than eleven years old, and she watched him expressionlessly. She didn't seem to have any color in her at all, just white dreams and bloodless lines leaning against each other in the shape of a human being.

"Where am I?" was the first thing he thought to ask. His voice struggled to climb out of his raw throat.

"You're in my house," she answered. "During the battle against the Soviets my parents and I were huddling together when Papa heard a thump on the door – it was nearly midnight, I think – and he got up to check it and you were there. You got hit in the head with shrapnel and you passed out right against our door." The girl raised a fingernail to her lips and began chewing on it. "Isn't that lucky?"

"What…what day was that? What day is it now?"

"Today's May 4th. But we took you in on April 30th, though it was pretty much May 1st. So you've been asleep for just over three days. You must be hungry. Do you want some soup? It'll be mostly broth because of the rationing and all, but it's better than nothing…"

Rolfe didn't reply, instead trying to wake his brain back up. But a heady throb of pain in his temple was making it difficult, as it spread through his skull and clouded his vision for a few seconds. He took a moment to look past the girl and examine his surroundings. The room he was in was shabby and the colors monotonous. The gray walls flaked, a slightly lopsided bookshelf stood opposite his bed, and the silver light was suffocated by dust.

Then he noticed – the silence. For God's sake, it had been so long since his ears hadn't been crowded with the shrieks of shelling, the clattering pant of guns. But now it was so quiet and the world felt…empty without all the noise.

He swallowed. Swiped his dry tongue over dryer lips.

"Is the battle over?" he said.

"Yes, of course. It ended May 2nd, two days ago."

Rolfe stared at the girl with wide eyes. _I missed it. The battle's over and I missed it._ With all the pathetic, futile hope in the world he whispered "Did we win?"

"No. The Soviets have raised their flag over Berlin. You can see it out the window."

His heart climbed, pulsing, into his throat. _We tried. We tried to protect it._ Verdammt zur hölle! _We tried but we failed._ Boys half his age, maybe even younger, had died beside him trying to protect the Reich capital from those Russian monsters, and all for nothing…

He struggled to speak, his voice coming out in choked staccato bursts. "Tell me, please, what about my Führer? What's happened to my Führer?"

"Hitler?" The girl wrinkled her nose at his name, and part of Rolfe wanted to throttle her for her insolence. "Oh, he's been dead. On May 1st they announced on the radio that he killed himself. You were still sleeping."

The room no longer had any oxygen in it.

The entire ugly _world_ no longer had any oxygen in it.

_Hitler, dead?_

No. No, no, that couldn't be true, that was…that was so completely _impossible_. How could that bewitching genius of a man be one of the dead? The soul of Germany couldn't be gone; wouldn't he have known somehow, even in sleep? _It_ can't _be true._ Rolfe had seen a lot of dead soldiers over the last six years and they were all abandoned little houses with black empty windows for mouths and skin like plaster and a spirit that's already being forgotten and his Führer, his poor _brave_ Führer, _could not possibly_ be one of them!

"Liar," he choked.

"Hitler's dead." She repeated.

Rolfe was shivering, sweat clinging to his face in translucent beads, and ice crystallized over his heart and spread underneath his skin and he felt so so so cold, but he didn't cry, because _**DON'T CRY YOU LITTLE COWARD YOU LITTLE NOTHING**_ Brave Nazi Soldiers weren't _ever_ supposed to cry, not ever.

"There's more," the little girl said. "Do you know what the Nazis have done? To the Jews?"

" _No!"_ Rolfe gasped. "Don't you tell me another word, not a damned thing!"

"But –"

"Get the hell out of here!" He snarled.

She left the room, her footsteps gray static.

And Rolfe was alone, faintly guilty for snapping at this little girl. He hadn't meant to yell at her. But the guilt was overpowered immensely by the feeling that Hitler had left behind him an immeasurable vacuum in the world. That voice that had been like a great ship pulling the German people to their magnificent victory was dead, and Rolfe felt like he was drowning in a dark sea – lost and purposeless and without a single person to guide him.

* * *

The girl returned later, maybe an hour or two hours or perhaps three. But who really knew, or cared.

Rolfe stared at the folds in his thin bed sheet and didn't look at her once.

But when she talked in hushed whispers about everything the Allies had discovered as they closed in on Nazi Germany, he couldn't just ignore that. There was no way he could ignore the gravity behind what was said, so he listened. And he felt as if every droplet of blood inside him drained swiftly out and pooled amongst the grime beneath the bed.

The girl left, but Rolfe barely noticed. The gray air was crowded with barbed wire words, prodding at him and hissing _Look at what your beloved Führer has_ done _! Look!_

Who _could_ look away?

Oh, God – why couldn't he be dead? Why couldn't the shrapnel that had knocked him out for three days have knocked him out for eternity? Why on earth didn't he have a bullet slammed into his heart; why wasn't he nothing more than flakes of human scattered across the ruins of a bombed building? There had been infinite opportunities for him to be all those things between September 1939 and May 1945, but here he was instead, alive and learning just _what his beloved Führer had done._

" _The Final Solution to the Jewish Question."_

Wasn't that what she'd called it?

" _The Final Solution."_

It was such an aseptic term.

And it didn't really describe all the things this little girl had heard as the Third Reich, in all its infallibility, dove towards the end.

Rolfe felt as weak as ripped tissue paper. How could it be possible – how could something like this have happened in the forties? The enchantment disappeared in a hiss. Suddenly the Nazi flag could not hide the dark seethe of death underneath it. National Socialism was no longer built on triumph and courage and glory, but on blood and corpses and hatred itself…

He had wanted the Jews out of Germany – he couldn't remember exactly why he'd wanted that so badly, now – but he hadn't - he hadn't wanted them _killed,_ he hadn't wanted them _exterminated. Dear God, this wasn't supposed to happen. I didn't - I never_ imagined -

Of course he'd known of the concentration camps' existence. Everybody did. And there had been vague rumors, too, saying the part of the _Wehrmacht_ stationed on the Eastern Front had killed large numbers of Jews, but he'd been told that if it _was_ true, those Jews were part of a Soviet resistance movement and therefore needed to be taken care of. Rolfe didn't put much thought into it. He had been on the Western Front – Denmark, Belgium, Holland, France, the United Kingdom, and West Germany – so he didn't focus much on what was happening in the East. He was just trying to keep his lucidity while his fellow calamine-faced comrades died, with blood painted across their uniforms and the vestige of a " _Sieg Heil"_ on their schoolboy lips.

But now the fact that he hadn't paid attention was tormenting him. He may have known about the labor camps and heard imprecise whispers about massacres on the Eastern Front, but nobody had told him that they wanted to kill every Jew in Europe; nobody had told him all the _details._ Nobody had told him about people digging ditches in the ground for hours, only to find that those ditches were tombs and that they had a bullet hole gaping on the backs of their heads. Nobody had told him about human experimentation, with doctors splitting the skin like an envelope and lungs crammed with mustard gas and eyes injected with chemicals to see if their color would change and God knows what else. Nobody had told him about human beings transfigured into numbers and then into smoke, suspended in the sky above places with unfamiliar names like _Auschwitz-Birkenau; Treblinka; Ravensbrück._ Nobody had told him about the existence of chambers embroidered with Zyklon-B and jagged fingernail marks; nobody had told him about furnaces built _just right_ for a human body. And it wasn't just the Jews – homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war, ethnic Poles, Slavs, Romani, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, the political left –

_Jesus Christ_ –

How could it possibly be true?

But somehow – he knew it was.

_And I was a part of it,_ he thought. _I fought for the Nazis' survival in the war. I knew that people were being hauled off to camps, and I didn't think anything of it. Just because I didn't know about the extermination doesn't mean I'm not guilty. I_ helped _them carry out this – this_ killing _for so long –_

The rush of his pulse was sickeningly loud in his ears, loud as the resonance of a bomb. The Jews no longer seemed to be parasitic _Untermenschen;_ sub-humans. He'd thought of them as such for the longest time, enough to not even question it when he knew they were being kept in captivity. But… _why_? The only thing he could think of was because Adolf Hitler had said so. He'd believed in the superiority of ethnic Germans and he had worshiped the Führer for eight whole _years_ of his life, and the only reason he could fathom for this was because Adolf Hitler had told him to.

Surely – surely he hadn't been that _stupid._ Surely he hadn't mindlessly absorbed everything they told him. But he _had_. He'd believed in them so much; had been ready to sacrifice everything for them. Intoxicated by the fiery delirium of the atmosphere; the sheer depth of Hitler's voice and the roar of the fanatical crowd, he'd given up his soul and his individuality for the German cumulative, and had been ready to give up his very life, too. And now it all seemed nothing more than a drunken scarlet dream; a spell now broken.

Rolfe scrambled out of the bed. The pain of his injury clawed at him, and he swayed dazedly on his feet. There was a clouded, dirty mirror on the wall that he hadn't noticed before, and he stared into it as his breath staggered. His skin was fever pale, his frame was too thin, and his flaxen hair was so filled with dust and soot it looked almost white. A bandage with a bright smear of blood covered his right temple, and he had haunted, scared-little-boy eyes taped to his face.

He had never been so repulsed by a human being in his life.

"Rolfe, you fool," he murmured hoarsely. "You damned _silly_ fool."

It hit him all at once. How stupid he was, how _naïve_ he was; a mere boy trying to be a man…how had anyone managed to stand him? He was nothing more than a petty, dull, tediously average boy – young and foolish and hypnotized by some _stupidly_ romantic notion of fire and mysticism, unity and promises, gallant soldiers and new Teutonic orders. He had believed in them so much he'd been willing to sacrifice the familiar thrum of his heartbeat, the diligent inhale-exhale of his lungs. He had believed in them so much he thought that only National Socialism held the key to any sort of strength, any sort of _worth,_ and now – and now –

_God_ knows _how many people are dead... Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?_

Rolfe examined the face in the mirror. He was twenty four years old, but even with extra inches and too-defined cheekbones, he still had about him the frightened, wide-eyed air of a child. Well, of course he did. He'd sold his soul without a second thought at only seventeen, and that damn Führer had never given it back to let it grow up, had he?

Rolfe heaved a breath, feeling as if his lungs were crumpling in on themselves.

"I have no idea who I am." he whispered.

It wasn't as if he'd been much of a person to give away before the Nazis, but he'd thrust into their hands whatever naïve, pliant material there had been… He'd _built_ himself out of them, believing there was no meaningful life without them, and now he was just a pristine blond automaton with organs of copper and brass and cinders; with blanched Aryan skin _(so foolishly prized)_ and propaganda posters folded in the shape of a brain, filled with piles of lies and bars and bars and _bars_ of clobbered-in facts about Adolf Hitler. He could now feel just as natural holding a grenade as he did holding a pen. He could recite the Führer's birthdate in two seconds flat, but for the life of him he could no longer remember just what color his mother's eyes were. He was nothing more than an obedient, strong, religiously devoted little war-machine.

_The goddamn Aryan masterpiece._

He hated them so much he could hardly breathe. Hitler had _lied_ to him. For so long Hitler's doctrine had been the biggest part of him, if not the _only_ part of him, and it was all lies. He wanted to throw something. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream every profanity he could think of, but every _scheisse_ and every _verflucht_ in the world could not fix this.

There was absolutely nothing that could fix this.

He had carelessly thrown himself away in 1937, and now Nazism was the only thing he was made of. For eight years he'd tried _so hard_ to be the kind of boy Hitler wanted, with bones of iron and a heart of flame, that he'd let himself fall away in the process. _I'll never be free of them. Not ever._ Horror fluttered nauseatingly in his stomach. Rolfe had bound himself to the Nazis blood, body, and soul, and even now when the Third Reich was all but dead, he could feel the black cords of the mortality that hid beneath the flag clawing through his organs, marking him forever. He clutched at his chest, as if wanting to splice himself open and let that mortality bleed out. Sweat slithered down his face like maggots.

He trembled. A knot swelled in his windpipe, the kind of knot that appears right before you start crying, but he didn't have any tears. In a burst of desperation he tried to rip off the Nazi armband on his uniform. He tugged at it violently, biting his lip with the effort, but it was just cinched so _tight_ – had it always been cinched so tight? – and in his weakened state he couldn't manage it. Rolfe abandoned the attempt, letting his arms fall to his sides.

_I can't even tear their armband off._

Oh, _God_ , what he would give to go back eight years. Maybe Gerhard's letter would get lost in the mail, or his parents would forbid him to go on a trip to Germany – any situation that would guarantee he'd never go to that speech in Berlin. _How fitting_ , he thought, that it all had begun in Berlin, where within Hitler's words he had seen a world reborn. And now, it was Berlin in which it was all ending.

Eight years…if only he could go back eight years. His life in Salzburg and almost everything about it felt like a strange, distant reverie. _Was there really a time when homework and my parents and girls were the only things I cared about?_

Without warning, that thought wrenched up memories and forced them jarringly to the forefront of his mind. His eyes widened.

"Liesl." He breathed.

Rolfe hadn't forgotten Liesl during the war. It would've been natural to forget a girl he'd kissed only once, but even in the midst of combat, and even with all his trying, he hadn't. In some of the more peaceful moments, memories of her would surface like sad, nostalgic stains on the war-torn canvas of his brain – the trust she'd gladly handed him as she sang " _I'll depend on you,";_ the splintering of that trust as she blinked under the glare of his torch.

_I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I am SO SO SO SO SORRY_

Just when he thought there wasn't any soul left to break, he remembered Liesl von Trapp.

Once upon a time he'd danced in a gazebo and inhaled the air filled with unsure surety, and he had held the hand of a sixteen year old girl with a childlike demeanor and dreamer's eyes, and the sky had been velvet and they were both just two young fools, tipsy on each other and the glitter of the night, and it had been _something_ like love, at least.

_And I gave it all away. I betrayed her – I – I exchanged her for a nothing more than a war and the blood of_ _**millions and millions of people on my hands.** _

Pure, utter hatred for himself burned hot and blistering under his skin.

God, if only he could have it all back. If only he still had Liesl von Trapp, and they could suffocate in the edelweiss and the roses and beam until they hurt and murmur nothing into each other's mouths. But no…he'd gone and ruined everything. The details of his face were probably bleary in her mind. She probably hated him now, if he was even worth the energy it took to hate.

The irony was cruel, now that he thought about it. He'd sang to her once about his maturity and experience, but here he was, twenty-four and practically no different than when he was seventeen, petrified since 1937 in a state of infantile obedience. But Liesl…Liesl was twenty-three and probably all grown up and even more beautiful. _Ironic, too, that we parted ways in a cemetery._ Liesl had managed to flee from death that night. Rolfe had it in his very bones, in the hollows of his collarbone and the cracks in his palms.

_But...what if she didn't escape it?_ The thought came seemingly from nowhere, and the magnitude of it made his breath snag in his throat. _Weren't people put in concentration camps for political reasons, too? Would Captain von Trapp's refusal to join the Navy even be enough to land him in a camp?_ Rolfe imagined the von Trapps being caught as they ventured into Switzerland, imagined them settling in some other place in Europe and being discovered by Nazi soldiers, anxiety draining their faces of color. _If they put the Captain in a camp, would they put the rest of his family there, too?_

_Of_ course _they would._

Thought-up images barraged him – _**what if she ended up in a concentration camp? –**_ Liesl packaged in a freight car, arms drawn protectively around a little sister – Liesl sobbing as her father and her brothers are torn away from her – Liesl having all her beautiful hair shorn off, a number inked onto her skin, clothed in a blue-striped uniform – Liesl's wide eyes branded with all the ugliness of the world – Liesl peering up at a hopeless sky marked with the pattern of spiked wire –Liesl's skin drawing further between the ladder of her ribs, as if wanting to hide – Liesl slumped dead in a gas chamber, foam spilling between the candy whiteness of her teeth – Liesl blackened and incinerated to ash in the crematoria –

To think – that her alabaster skin and translucent eyes might no longer be things of this world –

_Oh my God –_

The wound in his head throbbed, dyeing his vision with blots of crimson. A sick light-headedness stole over him, and he felt himself begin to tilt over. He slapped a hand against the wall, just beside the mirror.

_What if she's dead? What if they're all dead?_ The aristocratic firmness of the Captain, the fresh-faced prettiness of his eldest daughter – they couldn't be gone. Could they? But no – that was a silly thought, for how many corpses were out there that simply "couldn't be gone"?

No. A silly thought. Anyone could be dead in this day and age. Even a brave family of nine who saw the danger when no one else did. Rolfe dragged a shaky hand through his hair. _I could've gone with them. Captain von Trapp asked me to come; he tried to warn me that I was playing with fire, but I'm just too ridiculously_ stupid… _Where would I be now if I'd gone?_ He realized now how many chances he had had to escape. He had seen the signs of the Nazis' sinister core, glimpses through the blindfold, and completely ignored them. And now it was far too late.

He wanted to know what happened to them. He wanted to know what had happened to his Liesl. She could be anywhere. She could be alive and bright as summer, her heart wiped free of him and all he'd done to her. Or she could be nothing more than the too-short dash between dates on a gravestone. _If her family stayed in Europe, they probably would've gone to a neutral country… Maybe they're still in Switzerland? They could've gone from there to Ireland or Sweden, too…_ He tried to fight down his dizziness, thinking wildly. _Or maybe they're not even in the continent anymore. The United States? South America?_ God, _they could be_ anywhere. _They might not even be alive._

The worst thing was that the chances of finding out what had happened to Liesl were slim. He didn't know why it was so devastating to him, this idea of never knowing. Maybe it was because he had known Liesl back before he lived in a completely swastika-shaped world. Back when the Captain saw a boy worth saving as he stood, terrified, in the Abbey graveyard.

But even if he somehow managed to find them, what would be the point? What did he expect to happen – for Liesl to welcome him with forgiving arms? _That's just stupid._ Nobody in their right mind would want to forgive him. He was a smasher of hearts, the destroyer of Liesl's innocence, the near murderer of Captain Georg von Trapp, the actual murderer of God knows how many Allied soldiers, and a National Socialist.

A whole bunch of nothing in one broken package.

He couldn't burden her by showing up, lugging a case of bad memories with him, and making her deal with his pitiful nothing-self. But at the same time, he didn't want to be forgotten by her. She still haunted him, showing up as a relic from the time when he still had enough room in him to care about something other than the Fatherland, even if that something wasn't himself. Part of him wanted to haunt _her_ , too. _Oh, Rolfe._ He thought bitterly. _You're not any less selfish, are you?_

It struck him, suddenly, that he probably ought to be crying over this. The thought made him pause. Here he was, having one terrible epiphany after the other, and his eyes were as dry as Berlin's dusty streets. _What the hell is wrong with me? Any normal human being would be bawling his eyes out._ But then – he barely felt like a human being anymore, so maybe it made a bit of sense. The funny thing about six years of war and eight years of trying to be a good Nazi instead of a weakling is that you get numbed to horrors previously unimagined, or if not numbed, at least you forget how to show the emotion.

Rolfe had once hated crying with a vengeance. He hated crying like he hated Jews and everyone else on that long Nazi list of hatred. It made him look pathetic, and there was nothing he wanted less than to look pathetic.

What he would give for some tears right now.

Maybe a river trickling from between his eyelashes would cleanse him. Crying would mean he still – maybe – had a chance to stop being a puppet and start being a person. It might wash away the guilt, the crimson rust of death he felt dried to his face.

He leaned in close to the mirror. "Come on," he breathed, his voice thick. "Cry, you dumb thing. Nobody's going to come and yell at you for looking like a coward. So this is your chance."

His eyes were wide and blue and bloodshot, but definitely not wet. He had all the symptoms of being about to cry – strangled breathing, a swollen lump in his throat. But the only trickle he could see was blood escaping from underneath the bandage on his temple.

Even when weeping was the only reasonable thing to do, that old, breath-stealing fear that whimpered _I-don't-want-to-be-a-failure_ was still there, cowering in his lungs.

He felt like he was losing his mind.

Helplessness fell heavily over him. He squeezed his eyes shut. He was such a wreck. He was just so tired of everything and he hated himself so much and he couldn't see any way to claw himself out of the hole he'd dug for himself. Twenty-four wasn't the age for feeling this sad. He folded his hands together so hard his knuckles paled, and he struggled to breathe.

" _God, Jesus, Adolf –_ "

He froze. Stared at the boy in the mirror.

Even now – even _now_ – he could not pray to God and to Christ without saying Hitler's name in the same breath.

And the world in which concentration camps could be sprung from man's imagination was terrible, and everything in it was terrible. And so many people had died in so many horrible ways (people who hadn't _deserved_ to die, when there were plenty who did) and he swore he could feel them all pressing in on him, emaciated hands clawing, bones clacking, and tortured voices begging for mercy. And he was not some brave white hero, one part in the singular German body, he was just a boy who had once grasped at Hitler's flag, desperate to be a person who meant something, but through his own self-destructive gullibility he'd become just the opposite – a messy nonentity choking on all his mistakes; some cracked, silly thing the war spit out. And Nazism had burned him right through, eaten away all the malleable material that was Rolfe Gruber, so that now he was caving in on himself, a paper boy dying in an onslaught of flame, and he was so naïve and so empty and so young and so lost and the Nazis owned his soul and they would _never_ let him go, and he knew he would never be able sing again without cutting his tongue on _Horst-Wessel-Lied_ and _Deutschland Erwache,_ and he would never be able to hold a girl's heart in his palms without remembering the one he'd broken, and he would never be able to sign a letter without his fingers wanting to guide the pen through the familiar pattern of " _Heil Hitler! -Rolfe"_ , and he would never be able to do a damn thing without fever breaking along his neck because _whatiftheFührerdoesn'tapprovesorrysorrysorry_ and he would never, ever, _ever_ escape from them.

_**Du gehörst dem Führer** _

Blood loudened. The room blurred. Hands scrabbled, frantic, at his belt –

Hands shook – trembled –

The barrel of Rolfe's pistol was painfully cold against his tongue as he closed his mouth around it hurriedly, almost like a kiss. A shrill roar was in his ears, a noise like the screams of a cattle car full of Jews, or an auditorium full of fanatical Germans. A pair of opiate, crystalline blue eyes seemed to dance in the dead, hazy Berlin-air before him. _Liesl-eyes...?_

_Or Führer-eyes?_

He pulled the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read, gave kudos to, and/or commented on this story! I finished it a long time ago but I'm glad I brought it over to AO3 for others to enjoy. Thanks again, and please leave a review letting me know what you thought!


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